Shocking Kung Fu of Huo's (2018)

Shocking Kung Fu of Huo's (2018)
Chinese Title: 霍家拳之威震山河
Translation: Huo Family Fist's Prestigious Shocking Mountain River[1]

Starring: Li Huo-Huo, Jie Yan, Zhang Lanyi
Director: David
Action Director: Qi Liang

When I sat down to watch this, I was expecting the Shocking Kung fu of Huo (Yuanjia) and, as a result, a ramshackle remake of Fearless with a much smaller budget, less talented martial artists on display, and a thick veneer of overall crappiness. Surprisingly enough, I didn't really get that. The Huo of the title might be related to Huo Yuanjia, but the master's name is actually Huo Zhenshan. And while fighting foreigners is part of the story, the main story made me think of a kung fu version of West of Zanzibar. And the kung fu is actually pretty good, as opposed to its follow-up.

The movie opens in 1911 with Huo Zhenshan and He Dachuan on the run from an axe gang, as the result of their burning down an opium den. A huge fight ensues, with the Huo and He making a good stand for themselves, until He is injured and ultimately cut down by the hatchet-wielding killers. As all this is going on, He's wife, Chun, is going into labor with her son, He Shiwei by her side. The baby is delivered, but Chun dies in childbirth. Shortly thereafter, the axe gang leader, Wei Yiping, shows up at the house and takes away the newborn. He Shiwei is hiding under a bed as this happens.

Twenty years later, Huo Zhenshan is running a kung fu school is Shanghai and teaching morality and virtue to his students. External forces challenge said teachings in the form of the "Black Fist," an underground fighting circuit ran by Wei Yiping and his Western business partner, the boxer Mr. Charles. Similar to Ip Man, the deal is that if you can beat the establishment's top three fighters---a Thai boxer, a Samurai and a Korean tae kwon do expert--you win a whole bunch of gold. Nobody has won yet. Mr. Charles sends a challenge to the Huo school, but Master Huo forbids his students from taking part, angering his headstrong senior student, Huang Jinpeng. Nonetheless, Master Huo decides to take part in the tournament, under the guise of a Chinese Opera performer. He defeats the three masters, but suffers from an asthma attack, being saved at the last minute by Stone, the Huo school's mute housekeeper.

The Chinese Opera fighter, now dubbed The Black Demon, shows up at the Black Fist again to challenge Mr. Charles. The Demon wins, visibly using the Huo style of kung fu. At about the same time, Master Huo passes away at his home under mysterious circumstances. The death is pinned on Stone, who is taken away by the police. We discover that Stone isn't mute after all, and he claims to know something about the death of the master. Meanwhile, Huang Jinpeng assumes both control of the Huo School and the role of the Black Demon in the underground fights...but there's foul play afoot.

Like I said, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. It's not a great film, but it's a solid kung fu potboiler with a fair amount of solid action and a decent story. The inclusion of foreign fighters is pretty much a given at this point in Chinese martial arts movies, although it loses importance to the plot after the first half. The focus is on the characters, mainly the relationship between the characters, namely Stone; Master Huo's daughter, Huo Xiaoyu; and Huang Jinpeng. We learn more about their backstories and motivations as the film progresses, until we reach the climax, when everything is completely revealed. The finale is just as heavy on the melodrama as it is on the fighting.

The fighting is provided by Qi Liang, who also worked on Chen Zhen: The Tokyo Fight, which was the sequel to this movie. The lighting problems that dogged most of that movie's fights are absent here, so everything is quite visible. The exchanges are pretty good, although there are too many cuts here. The cutting here doesn't render the fights unintelligible, but it is a little irritating. Whenever people dismiss the Venom Mob for lacking power in their fights, I'm reminded that the counterpoint is that those guys, especially the Peking Opera Three (Lu Feng, Kuo Chi and Chiang Sheng) were capable of performing an obscene number of moves in a single cut. I don't expect movies today to reach that level, but 1-2 moves per cut can certainly be improved upon. There is some limited wire use too, but nothing beyond what you'd see in Fearless, so no biggie there.

There are a wide variety of fights and styles on display. The first fight is a two-vs-many melee involving the Huo fist and dozens of stuntment armed with hatchets and runs for a few minutes. The underground fights feature a variety of styles, including monkey fist, drunken fist (this guy almost beats everyone), Muay Thai, kickboxing, Tae Kwon Do, and others, plus your usual Northern Chinese Wushu. There isn't much weapons work outside of people wielding hatchets, but there's enough variety in the hand-to-hand to satisfy. There is also some jiu-jitsu/ground fighting included in the fights, although I'm not sure if the Huo school would have incorporated it into their repertoire in 1931[2]. All of the leads, including Zhang Lanyi (who plays Xiaoyu), get a chance to strut there stuff.  Zhang is probably the least impressive, as her moves lack power. But I can't fault a film for including a strong female kung fu fighter without trumpeting how her inclusion is blow for Women's Lib. The actors who play Master Huo, Stone and Huang Jinpeng are easily the best of the bunch and look really good in their fights. They're so good that the failure of this movie's follow-up to meet this movie's standards, despite having many of the same people behind the camera, completely befuddles me.

My main complaint about the action and the film as a whole is the finale, which underwhelms. It is broken into two parts: the duel between Stone and Huang Jinpeng, which plays like an old school shapes match, albeit updated for today's action standards. It's broken up by a bit of melodrama and then followed by a sequence where Stong, Huang, and Huo Xiaoyu fight a contingent of foreign fighters and axe gangsters. That section is disappointingly short and rather easy for our heroes, which is then followed by more melodrama and the film's denouement. A longer second section to the finale would have been greatly appreciated and may have even pushed this movie into minor classic territory. As it is, it warrants a recommendation and a single viewing at least.

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[1] - If you combine the Chinese characters for "Pretigious" and "Shocking", it Google translates them as "Megatron." So the title could be misinterpreted as Huo Family Fist's Megatron Mountain-River

[2] - I should point out that Huo Yuanjia's Ching Wu school incorporated a lot of Chinese martial arts into its curriculum. In some ways, it was the mixed martial arts of its time.