Young Hero of Shaolin II (1986)

Young Hero of Shaolin II (1986)
aka: Iron Man; New Fong Sai Yuk Part 2
Chinese Title: 新方世玉續集
Translation: New Fong Sai Yuk Sequel

 

Starring: Xun Feng (billed as Shut Bo-Wah), Chen Yong-Xia, Li Zhi-Zhou, Cheung Wang-Mui, Maggie Lam Chuen, Chui Ngai, Ko Fung, Chi Ke-Chuan, Chow Kung-Kin
Director: Ngai Hoi-Fung
Action Directors: Poon Yiu-Kwan, Lam Moon-Wah

 

I complained at length in my review of the first Young Hero of Shaolin film that the movie, in its attempts to fit in as much of Fong Sai-Yuk’s life as possible into the running time, became an episodic collection scenes, several of which were completely unrelated to the rest of the film around it. Moreover, the film was rather stingy on the fight, especially during the first fifty minutes or so. Despite some ambitious gimmicks to the fights, most of the choreography was uninspired until the final tournament.

Young Hero from Shaolin 2 goes out of its way to correct most of these flaws and is generally successful at doing so. There are two parallel plot threads established early on that intertwine by the end of the first act, so that we have an overarching conflict for the entire film. This is a major step forward from the first film, which sets up the two villains in the first scene and then keeps them out of the story until the last twenty minutes. The plot is also ambitious enough to include a villain who’s the brother of a character Fong Sai-Yuk fought in the previous film, which serves as a link between the two films.

One of my major issues with Young Hero from Shaolin was how it treated the supporting characters. Characters often showed in film simply because they “needed” to, but were quickly forgotten by the narrative. That was especially true with Wu Wai-Kin and Fong Sai-Yuk’s mother. This movie doesn’t make that mistake to such a degree, as the film is just about as much about Wu Wai-Kin as it is about Fong Sai-Yuk. While Miu Chui-Fa (Fong’s mother) doesn’t have a lot to do, she at least gets to participate in the film’s major set pieces.

Speaking of which, veteran director Ngai Hoi-Fung eschewed the inexperienced Mainland choreographers in favor of a couple of a third-string Hong Kong action directors. The movie is that much richer for it. Poon Yiu-Kwan worked on a dozen or so low budget films during the early 1970s, his main claim to fame being assistant action director in King Hu’s masterpiece A Touch of Zen. Lam Moon-Wah, who worked with Ngai on Story of the Drunken Master, is known around these parts for his superlative work on Yuen Biao’s Hero of Swallow. Quite frankly, this features some of the best choreography I’ve ever seen in a Mainland Chinese martial arts film.

The movie’s not perfect, however, but we’ll mention bring up the film’s flaws as we discuss the plot.

The movie starts out at the ShaolinTemple, where we meet Fong Sai Yuk (a returning Shut Bo-Wa, also of Yao’s Young Warriors). The opening scenes are rather confusing. We start with the Shaolin abbot gathering all of the monks together and saying that he has something to tell him. Suddenly, the film cuts to another part of the temple, where Fong Sai-Yuk is practicing his two-finger strike. Instead of striking things with his fingers, he prefers to do a one-handed handstand, but with only his index and middle fingers supporting his weight. Strangely enough, the abbot is watching, despite his declaring before that he had a declaration to make. I’ll also point out that the change in music is as abrupt as the scene change itself. After Fong’s demonstration, there’s another jarring cut to the Shaolin monks walking around the temple. I think this was taken from the earlier scene.

The next scene establishes Principle Plot Thread #1. The local Qing magistrate, Chang Bill (Yes, his name is Chang BILL!), is told by his boss that the Emperor is growing suspicious of Shaolin. Chang Bill is tasked with rooting out the rebels. Okay, that’s all well and good. After all, the Shaolin Temple was purged by the Qing government during Fong Sai-Yuk’s lifetime, at least according to contemporary literature. The problem is the scene after that, where Chang Bill goes to Wudan to solicit their services in this endeavor.

There’s nothing wrong with the Wudan subplot. It’s shown up in films like Two Champions of Shaolin and Showdown at Cotton Mill. While modern Wudan student typically deny that Wudan ever collaborated in the Qing’s campaign against Shaolin, it’s enough of a folk story that there may be some kernel of truth to it. The problem is that the Wudan school figure little in the story until the final series of battles. It certainly adds a level of scope to the film, but it’s hardly developed.

A bigger problem with the scene between Chang Bill and the leader of the Wu Tang Clan (yes, Wu Tang and Wudan are one and the same) is that Chang Bill specifically singles out Fong Sai-Yuk as their single target. He also seems extremely bent on killing Fong. That’s all well and good, but the other official had alluded to their being multiple rebels. So if you’re told to purge a temple because of rebel activity, why would you focus on a single layman who’s not even a full-time student anymore? Now if Fong Sai-Yuk were a rebel leader, that would make some degree of sense. But there’s nothing in the film that establishes Fong Sai-Yuk as a rebel in the first place. Yes, we know he was a big Ming patriot in real life, but the film more or less expects the viewer to be familiar with the history. That would be less of a problem if it weren’t for a piece of dialogue of Fong’s: “I never thought I’d see a government official who acted like a villain.” As silly and naïve as it is, it shows that Fong was never much of a rebel to begin with, nor did have any inherent dislike of the Qing rulers.

The next ten minutes of the film or so are made up of a bunch of random fights, which is always good. First we see Fong Sai-Yuk beating some of Chang Bill’s cronies, who are out terrorizing the populace. Then Wu Wai-Kin (now played by This is Kung Fu’s Li Zhi-Zhou) gets in a fight with a couple of bozos at a restaurant who mistaken him for Fong Sai-Yuk. That fight is followed by one set at Wu’s uncle’s (Chan Dung, Dragon from Russia and The God of Cookery) kung fu school, in which a bunch of thugs working for Dragon Head show to intimidate the school into not participating in the upcoming lion dance. The teacher’s daughter, Wu Wai-Jan (Cheung Wang-Mui), unleashes some pa-kua and helps keep the men at bay. Later on, a bunch of random hoodlums try to jump Wu Wai-Kin on his way home, all of whom are no match for Wu and his eagle claw style.

Wu Wai-Kin arrives at the Ngo school and the resulting dialogue between him and his uncle reveal Principle Plot Thread #2. Wu Wai-Kin’s parents were murdered by Dragon Head, who then used his influence to take over Wu’s family business: a clothes dye factory. Wu was then sent to Shaolin to train in kung fu in order to avenge his parents’ murder. This is a big part of the Wu Wai-Kin legend, since it shows up in Chang Cheh’s Men from the Monastery and Shaolin Avengers. The movie quickly establishes Dragon Head as being in cahoots with Chang Bill, thus sparing us a pair of underdeveloped plotlines. There’ll be plenty room for that with the introduction of villain #3.

Said villain is Lu Tai-Pang (Li Yu-Wen, The Undaunted Wudang), also known as the “Iron Mantis.” He’s Tiger Lu’s brother, whom I assume to be the same as Lui Hung, the main villain from the first film. He’s understandably upset that his brother died in a duel with Fong Sai-Yuk and wants his revenge.

So there’s an extended lion dance sequence, which ends in a huge brawl between the rival schools. During the lion dance, Chang Bill decides that he rather likes Wu Wai-Jan and asks Dragon Head to kidnap her for him. I like how in this scene, Chang Bill’s wife is listening in on her husband’s plans and her only reaction is a monotone “Oh, not another one.” Dragon Head employs Lu Tai-Pang’s services in kidnapping Fa-Kiu at some night festival, which is part of a trap to catch both Fong Sai-Yuk and Wu Wai-Kin.

Wu Wai-Jan is indeed kidnapped by Dragon Head and his gang, although not after a well-choreographed fight between her, Lu Tai-Pang, and Dragon Head’s men. And sure enough, Fong Sai-Yuk and Wu Wai-Kin are donning their “ninja gear” (yes, they use this term, even though there are no ninja in China, save the Lin Kuei) and going to Dragon Head’s place. They follow Dragon Head and Lu Tai-Pang into the forest, where they fall into a trap. The only reason they leave the forest alive is because of the sudden intervention of Fong Sai-Yuk’s mother (still played by Chen Yong-Xia, who was old enough to be Fong Sai-Yuk’s sister). 

After another random fight at a dye factory, Fong Sai-Yuk is challenged to a duel by Lu Tai-Pang. The locale just happens to be the sacred mountain retreat of Pai Mei himself (Chui Ngai, of Murky Shadows over the Gorges). Everybody knows it’s a trap, there’s no doubt about that. The problem is that even if they survive the next series of fights, there’s still the chance they’ll have to deal with an irate Pai Mei.

The scope of the plot here is far more ambitious than that of the last movie, since it tries to incorporate the events of the lives of not one, but two Chinese folk heroes into a single story arc. That’s a pretty tall order for a movie that’s less than a 100 minutes long, and obviously some subplots are going to suffer. The obvious underdeveloped subplot is that involving Pai Mei. According to most legends, Fong Sai-Yuk really did face off against Pai Mei, who may or may not have betrayed Shaolin. While their duel in the film is foreshadowed, Pai Mei doesn’t actually show up onscreen until after the real villains have been eliminated. It feels more like a historical coda than a legitimate plot development.

Then there’s the business with the Shaolin Spinning Palm technique. There’s a brief interlude from the main plot where Fong Sai-Yuk and Wu Wai-Kin go to Shaolin to inquire of the technique from San Te. For those of you who don’t know who San Te is, let me explain. San Te was a Shaolin monk who’s credited as being the guy responsible for opening up the Shaolin Temple to laymen. He’s the subject of several films, most notably the Lau Kar-Leung classic The 36^th Chamber of Shaolin. Anyway, San Te gives the two a brief explanation of how the technique would work. Suffice to say that there’s some payoff in that Fong gets to use the technique twice at the end. The problem is that we never actually seem training to use it, despite it being a lost style that not even the Shaolin Abbot could figure out.

Most of this is forgivable because there is so much action on display that the flaws in the story don’t stick out until later viewings (the sudden cuts in scenes being the main exception). Action directors Poon Yiu-Kwan and Lam Moon-Wah really outdo themselves here. Lam has been criticized before for not being a great action director. I think he proves here that his career has been a victim of time and talent restraints. There are action directors out there who can do wonders in a couple weeks’ shooting time, like Donnie Yen in Legend of the Wolf. Lam isn’t one of them. And while Poon has a pretty extensive résumé, most of his movies were cheap Taiwanese wuxia films, including The Samurai, which was one of the first old school movies I ever saw. I assume that Poon contributed to wire stunts in the film. There aren’t a lot of them, but they are executed with a great deal more panache than most Mainland films of that era.

Lam and Poon choreograph the fights in such a way that it never feels like the actors are performing sets on each other. The punches and kicks have more impact in this film than in the last few Mainland films I’ve seen. Speaking of which, both Shut Bo-Wa and Cheung Wang-Mooi have some nice aerial kicks, especially Cheung during the fight against the Wu Tang Golden Formation. The showdown between Fong Sai-Yuk and Chang Bill is one of the more brutal fights in a Mainland film, right up there with the finale of Holy Robe of Shaolin. It’s only undermined by a few seconds of unnecessary undercranking. I also call attention to Maggie Lam’s baguazhang in an early fight, which is executed with more power and crispness than what we saw in The Undaunted Wudang.

While most of the fights are hand-to-hand, Lam and Poon keep things varied like most self-respecting Mainland films do. Chan Wing-Ha, who did little of interest in the first film, gets to perform some nice tai chi sword play in three set pieces this time around. The fight at the dye factory has numerous attackers trying to tie up Fong Sai-Yuk with long strips of cloth, which is an interesting touch. Then there’s the showstopper: Fong and company take on an army of Wudan monks armed with razor sharp symbols. It’s referred to as the Golden Formation and is a reference to the Lo Han Formation of the last film, but on a larger scale. The choregraphy, while a bit chaotic, is far more interesting here than it was in the last film. Watching dozens of extras move in unison is just too cool for words.

All things considered, Young Hero of Shaolin 2 corrects most of the mistakes made in the first film. With that in mind, the filmmakers can field proud of themselves knowing that it is worthy to stand beside other adaptations of the Fong Sai-Yuk legend. It easily stands in the upper echelon of Mainland Chinese kung fu movies, thanks to two choreographers who, like Wu Wai-Kin, always stood in the shadows of their contemporaries. That should be reason enough to watch this film. If not, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else I can do for you.