Prince of the Sun (1990)

Prince of the Sun (1990)
aka Shaolin Lady[1]
Chinese Title: 太陽之子
Translation: Son of the Sun

 

Starring: Conan Lee, Cynthia Rothrock, Sheila Chan, Cheng Pak-Lam, Lam Ching-Ying, Lau Shun, Jeff Falcon, Chui Ying-Jat, Wellson Chin
Director: Wellson Chin
Action Director: Yuen Tak

Prince of the Sun is one of the lesser-known films in Cynthia Rothrock’s Hong Kong filmography, easily being eclipsed by her all-time classics, like Yes Madam!; Righting Wrongs; and Blonde Fury. In addition to not being remembered by most Hong Kong fans, those who have seen it think very little of it, even though as far as I’m concerned, it’s a better time at the movies than Inspector Wears Skirts, which gets a lot of positive attention, despite its paucity of Rothrock action.

When the Dalai Lama[2] dies, he is reincarnated as a little boy (Cheng Pak-Lam, of The Inspector Wears Skirts IV) somewhere in Mainland China. One of the lamas at the monastery is an evil Bat Demon (Lau Shun, of A Chinese Ghost Story II and Blade of Fury) who sends his minion to capture the child. A righteous monk (Lam Ching-Ying, of Mr. Vampire and Eastern Condors) takes it upon himself to protect the child, but is overcome by the bad guys. He instructs his pupil (Cynthia Rothrock) to find and protect child, who has ended up in Hong Kong with an illegal immigrant from the Mainland (Conan Lee, of Tiger on the Beat and King of the Sea) and an obnoxious woman (Sheila Chan of Heroes Among Heroes). Bring on the shenanigans!

Prince of the Sun—a remake of sorts of The Golden Child--follows the template set by dozens of action-comedies produced in the 1980s: begin with a bang, settle down in the second act to develop the story and characters, and then jack up the pace in the third act with non-stop action. The Inspector Wears Skirts follows that template, and to a lesser extent, Yes Madam! Even the all-time classic Police Story more or less develops the story in that manner. Generally what separates good examples of the formula from the lesser films is a) the quality of the action and b) the tolerability middle act.

The problem with Item B in this particular can be summed up in two words: Sheila Chan. She was one of the weak points of Yuen Woo-Ping’s average Heroes Among Heroes and she’s the weak link here, too. In Prince of the Sun, the plays a greedy, foul-mouthed gambling addict whom we meet verbally abusing her students at a local pre-school. Her sthick is not funny, it’s just grating and her character is simply unlikeable. There’s a running gag about her getting knocked out the window of her apartment, usually because someone punches or kicks her. Normally, that sort of a female-abuse-driven humor would not age very well in the (post-#MeToo) West, but her character is so irritating that it almost becomes funny. And as the middle act revolves around comic interactions between the three leads instead of doing anything with the story, I can see why most viewers might lose their patience—even if I don’t find it any worse than the antics of the girls in The Inspector Wears Skirts.

Action duties here were given to Yuen Tak, who was really coming on his own as an action director in 1990. He had worked on some of the Shaw Brothers later kung fu and wuxia films, but it was only in 1989 that he joined the modern-day action genre, assisting Yuen Biao on The Iceman Cometh. The following year turned out to be particularly prolific, with Yuen Tak working on the Yuen Biao film Shanghai, Shanghai ; teaming up with frequent collaborator Corey Yuen for She Shoots Straight; and even getting award consideration for Dragon from Russia. Prince of the Sun does not represent Yuen Tak’s best work, but as he spent much of the 90s doing wire-fu, MA purists will probably be a bit more generous with the action.

There are some six fights in the movie, the last of which can be broken up into a typical Hong Kong martial arts sequence and then a final showdown between Buddha and Demon, which becomes more a wire-assisted sorcery bit—something you’d expect in an Encounter of the Spooky Kind. The rest of the fights are fairly standard Hong Kong fare, with solid choreography from actors who know what they’re doing (Rothrock, Jeff Falcon, Chui Ying-Jat, and Lam Ching-Ying). Lam Ching-Ying only really cuts loose in one fight early on, and looks a far cry for from his Prodigal Son days. Chui Ying-Jat, who looks like Ken Low-by-way-of-Leslie-Cheung, impresses with his bootwork as always. Viewers shouldn’t expect too much from Conan Lee, unfortunately. His character gets involved in several fights, but comes across as a weakling until the end, when he gets possessed a la Encounter with the Spooky Kind (1980).

Cynthia Rothrock and Jeff Falcon dominate the film’s action. Rothrock gets one fight early on when she fights off a bunch of monks while escaping from the temple in Tibet. During the final half hour, she has no fewer than four fights against Jeff Falcon, which something of a record. Both of the performers look good. Cynthia Rothrock does an over-the-shoulder kick and a few acrobatic jump kicks, but otherwise does fairly standard kickboxing—better than her American films, though. The same goes for Jeff Falcon: he uses a lot more basic modern kick-and-punch moves than the classical wushu-inspired moves he used in other movies. There’s some good two-on-one choreography in their fights, and a lot more fighting than in overrated The Inspector Wears Skirts, but as I said, it’s not their best moment. Cynthia Rothrock fared better under Corey Yuen’s direction, while Jeff Falcon did better work in Outlaw Brothers and Blonde Fury (once more, under Corey Yuen’s direction).

Watch the first 15 and final 30 minutes…everything in between is Hong Kong comedy at its most grating.

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[1] - The alternate title “Shaolin Lady” is a bit of misnomer, as the monks are not Shaolin monks, but Lamas. But then, “Lama Lady” would probably make your average person thing of a film about a crazed old lady who raises llamas.

[2] - The Dalai Lama being the principle figure in Tibetan Buddhism and considered to be a reincarnation of Buddha himself.