Forced Vengeance (1982)

Forced Vengeance (1982)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Mary Louise Weller, Camila Griggs, Michael Cavanaugh, David Opatoshu, Seiji Sakaguchi, Frank Michael Liu, Bob Minor, Lloyd Kino, Leigh Hamilton
Director: James Fargo
Action Director: Aaron Norris

 

I start right off the bat saying that this is one of my least favorite Chuck Norris films so far, at least from his Golden Age. Obviously, I’m going to guess that Forest Warrior and Bells of Innocence are worse than this, but for those made between Breaker! Breaker! and Delta Force 2, this one has definitely been the weakest. It just felt like a total waste of action movie potential, especially for one being set in Hong Kong during the 1980s! I realize that Winners and Sinners was still a year away and Police Story wouldn’t be a thing for another three, but Chuck had starred in Slaughter in San Francisco and had some idea of what Hong Kong talent could be. This movie gives us NONE OF THAT.

Norris plays Josh Randall, a former soldier turned “security chief” at a Hong Kong casino. The casino is owned by half-Chinese, half-Jewish businessman Sam Paschal (character actor David Opatoshu). Sam is now semi-retired, leaving his son, David (Frank Michael Liu, who had roles in Johnnie To films like PTU and Breaking News), to run the joint. Obviously, my first question here is “Does Hong Kong even have casinos?” My knee-jerk response is to say that Hong Kong casinos aren’t even a thing—that’s what Macau is for. Usually in these movies, if you need to throw in a casino, you have the characters take a ferry to Macau. So, if you can ignore that factual inaccuracy, let’s go on with the story.

As we’ll learn later, the casino is in dire straits after David opened the casino for betting on the then-current World Cup games, whose pay-outs were more than the casino could afford. Enter the Osiris Group, run by Stan Raimondi (Michael Cavanaugh, of The Haunting remake and The Enforcer): Raimondi runs a rival casino and wants to buy Paschal’s joint. Sam rejects Raimondi’s offer on the grounds that Raimondi will turn it into a front for drugs and prostitution, despite his son’s pleadings. Raimondi, in typical mobster fashion, responds by having his goons murder the Paschal boys. Thus, the casino is left in the hands of Sam’s daughter, Joy (Camila Griggs, who later played the gym teacher in the “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” series).

Randall, who discovered the bodies, quickly finds Joy and leaves her in the care of his girlfriend, Claire (Mary Louise Weller, who was in National Lampoon’s Animal House). The police arrest him as a suspect in the Paschals’ murders, but one of the detectives is in Raimondi’s pocket. Thankfully, the Asian one (Lloyd Kino, who had small roles in Mortal Kombat and the 1998 Godzilla) is the honest one and Randall gets out. From there, he and the girls have to run all over Kowloon and Victoria until he can discover who the true brains behind Osiris are.

Let me start with the obvious: for being a film set in Hong Kong, there are a lot of white people in this movie. I realize that it was a British colony, but yeah, this is a very Caucasian rendition of Hong Kong. Oh sure, there are lots of Chinese people as background players and extras, but even the so-called “half-breed” characters are very white. Even two of the important Asian roles—Inspector Chen and mob hitman Kam—are played by Japanese actors, the latter being played by Japanese wrestler Seiji Sakaguchi. So yeah, this is the least Chinese version of Hong Kong made since the golden days of Hollywood. Apparently, a young Tony Leung Chiu-Wai has a brief scene as “young intern,” although I couldn’t tell you what scene he appears in.

There are many downsides to this inauthentic version of Hong Kong, including the fact that Chuck and his brother Aaron failed to avail themselves of the local stuntman talent for the fight scenes. This is one movie where Chuck should have let Aaron just take a step back to observe and supervise, while letting an actual Hong Kong choreographer actual handle the fights. There would have been some real corkers, instead of giving a scene where a guy confronts Chuck with a pair of nunchaku, only for the latter to scare him away with a gun. The final showdown pits Chuck against Sakaguchi, who is more of a big bruiser type than a talented martial artist. Some of these fights have a violent edge to them, but are really lacking in the choreography department. Michael Cavanaugh swings around a bo staff like he means it, but I’m sure that we would have preferred Sammo Hung and the Hung Ga Ban instead.

The movie also feels incompetently filmed, which is surprising considering that director James Fargo helmed more competent fare, like the Dirty Harry entry The Enforcer. The editing is off: just watch the scenes of the characters fleeing through Kowloon during the day, followed by a fight scene (in slow motion) involving silhouettes of Chuck and his opponent fighting in front of a neon sign (which makes it look like night), and then cuts to the characters fleeing in the daytime. It’s a very odd scene. There are other similar scenes that just don’t feel like they were edited or photographed well.

For exploitation fans, there is a brief scene at a strip joint with some dancers showing their ta-ta’s. It ends with Chuck talking to the establishment’s star prostitute…another white girl (Leigh Hamilton)!!! Actress Mary Louise Weller also gives the viewer some rape nudity near the end in a scene that really did not need to be in the movie. And like I said, some of the fights end on bloodier notes than your typical Chuck Norris film of that era. But those looking for quality bootage—or decent acting, directing, photography and editing—will be better off looking elsewhere.

 

Dragon the Master (2001)

Dragon the Master (2001)
Aka: Enter the Dragon Master
Chinese Title: 戰龍
Translation: Battle Dragon

 

Starring: Roy Cheung Yiu-Yeung, Dragon Sek Tin-Lung, Edmond So Chi-Wai, Karen Cheung Bo-Man, Huang Yang, Billy Chow Bei-Lei, Xing Yu, Jewel Lee
Director: Ray Wu Wai-Shing
Action Director: Lam Moon-Wah, Lung Sang

 

Brucesploitation as a “legitimate” sub-genre of martial arts movies started within a year of the Little Dragon’s death with the sleazy (albeit somewhat accurate) Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story. It didn’t take long for these films to become big all over the world. Bruce Li (aka Ho Tsung-Tao) was the first legitimate Brucesploitation actor. Within two years, he was joined by Bruce Le (aka Huang Kin-Lung), and then Dragon Lee (aka Bruce Lei aka Keo Ryong) the year after that. Meanwhile, Leung Siu-Lung and Michael Chan Wai-Man were being marketed as Bruce Liang and Bruce Chen, respectively—the latter having that moniker in the overseas releases of his movies.

It is a matter of contention when the last Brucesploitation film came out. Bruce Li was already tiring of the gig by the turn of the decade. Dragon Lee stayed in the game up until around 1983 or so. One may argue that Bruce Liang was never a true Brucesploitation actor, with the exception of The Dragon Lives Again. And that was in 1977, while these movies still had some gas. Bruce Le seemed to stay in character the longest: his last credited Brucesploitation film is Bruce’s Secret Kung Fu from 1988, which I know little about save it cribbed footage from his first entry in the sub-genre: Bruce’s Deadly Fingers. That may very well be the last “official” Brucesploitation of that original cycle.

The 1990s were relatively light on that sort of thing. Stephen Chow often found ways to reference the Little Dragon in his movies, like the God of Gamblers sequels and The King of Comedy. Jet Li’s Black Mask is an overt reference to Kato, whom Bruce played in the 1960s. More importantly, Jet remade Lee’s classic Fist of Fury in 1994 as Fist of Legend. The following year, Donnie Yen adapted the same source material into a popular TV series of the same title. Hollywood also applied its decades of experience in making sleazy, inaccurate biopics to Bruce with Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story.

The Brucesploitation revival (if you may call it that) started in 2001 with Dragon the Master, starring a newcomer named Dragon Shek. It appears that the man studied both jeet kune do and Lee’s mannerisms, and has even gone on to teach the former at a kung fu school in Beijing. He made a handful of movies in the aughts, but has since dropped out of a sight as far as I can tell.

Dragon the Master tells the story of…well, I don’t know. The script has a difficult time focusing on a single character, so there are a number of different plot threads competing with each other for dominance. In fact, the least important character in all this is Master Tin Lone (Dragon Shek, of Iron Lion and Big Boss Untouchable), head of an important martial arts school in Hong Kong. He just hangs around his dojo and berates his students until it is time to dish out the kung fu justice in the third act.

More important is Master Tin’s sister, Shally (Huang Yang). She’s a developer for a video game company and is working on a new, realistic fighting game that I guess will make Mortal Kombat look like Gumbi. The movie opens with a cool fight between two mo-cap actors, one of whom is Master Tin’s student, Cherwood (Karen Cheung, of Big Boss Untouchable and The Bravest Escort Group). We then learn that the producers of the game are debating which style they should glorify in the game: Kung Fu? Muay Thai? Shally obviously favors kung fu, specifically jeet kune do. We also learn that her co-worker, Colewell (Ray Cheung, of The Mission and Avenging Fist), is kind of jealous of Shally.

Colewell is so jealous, in fact, that he teams up with a mysterious fellow named Mr. Tong (Takakazu Nishiwaka, of The Story of Freemen and Shadow Mask) to steal Shally’s program before she can finish developing it. To that end, Tong sends his female bodyguards (Shadow Mask’s Ritsuko Nagai and No Problem 2’s Seina Kasugai) to hack into her computer and steal it. Although the bad guys acquire the program, they can’t do anything about it without a disk and some of her passwords. So, they need Shally. And when Cherwood suspects her hustler boyfriend, Miles (Edmond So, of Dragon Heat and Kung Fu Police), of being involved, they end up at the nightclub where Mr. Tong and his entourage hang out. Shally is kidnapped and Cherwood must team up with her master to get her back.

Meanwhile, there’s a parallel subplot involving a hick kickboxer named Gordon (Billy Chow, of The Pedicab Driver and In the Line of Duty V) who has showed up in city looking for fame and fortune in the ring. More specifically, he wants to participate in some McGuffin tournament that Master Tin Lone is hosting. He initially goes to work at a rival kung fu school (whose teacher appears to be played by Lam Moon-Wah, the film’s action director), but leaves after they relegate him to menial labor. He also goes to Tin Lone’s school, but eventually gets kicked out for beating up all the students in a huff. So, he ends up throwing in his lot with Colewell and Mr. Long.

From the storytelling perspective, the major flaw of Dragon the Master is that it can’t decide who the main character is. It really jumps back and forth between Gordon’s attempt to find a kung fu school to sponsor him—you’d think there’d be more than two schools in Hong Kong and one of them would appreciate his talents—and Shally and Cherwood’s attempts to get the former’s computer program back from the bad guys. As I said before, Dragon Shek’s Master Tin Lone doesn’t really do anything within the bounds of the story until the final half hour or so. Interestingly enough, he is joined by Master Chan of the rival school for the final battles, even though the latter has no real reason to want to help him.

The fight choreography was brought to you by Lung Sang (who choreographed Shek’s other films) and third-string action director Lam Moon-Wah, whose career I covered in a separate article. Some reviews suggested that Lam was able to up his game to Yuen Woo-Ping levels in this film, although I didn’t really see it. At best, it resembles some of the early 1990s cheapies that Donnie Yen made to keep the lights on. Most of the action is grounded, with only the occasional use of wire-assisted trickery. This is especially true for Karen Cheung’s sword fights, which often go into Crouching Tiger territory despite the modern setting. Cheung’s fights often suffer from unnecessary undercranking, especially her fight with Naked Weapon’s Jewell Lee early on. The undercranking peeks its ugly head during Dragon Shek’s final duel with Billy Chow, which is really out of place. That’s a shame, because both men were displaying some solid bootwork and didn’t need the extreme speeding up at all.

That said, Dragon Shek, Billy Chow and Lam Moon-Wah look really good in their fight sequences. Some think that the showstopper is the duel between Shek and Lam, in which the latter performs drunken boxing. Also joining the action is a pre-Kung Fu Hustle Xing Yu, who plays a Thai boxer in Mr. Tong’s employ. He participates in a handful of fights and demonstrates the kicking prowess that would serve him well in future movies. The group melees are pretty decent and display some 80s style choreography, although I have to wonder why Dragon Shek randomly shows up in the infamous yellow track suit in one of them.

The fight choreography is pretty good for the most part, but cheapened by the aforementioned undercranking, quite a bit of shaky cam, and some bad lighting. I’m not quite sure about that last one, if it’s a problem with the transfer, the film stock, or if it indeed the fault of Mr. Kirk Wong (the Erotic Journey one, not the Crime Story one). However, much like Extreme Challenge, traditional martial arts films have grown scarce in Hong Kong over the course of the past few decades and Donnie Yen and Andy On can only do so much by themselves. I do think fans should watch Dragon the Master, despite its flaws.

 

 

Extreme Challenge (2001)

Extreme Challenge (2001)
Chinese Title: 地上最強
Translation: The Strongest on the Ground

 

Starring: Yeung Chuen-Ai, Ken Chang Tzu-Yao, Patricia Ja Lee, Jacqueline Li, Paul Rapovski, Somchai Siabkuntod, Stephen Tung Wai, Scott Adkins, Nikki Powell
Director: Stephen Tung Wai
Action Director: Jack Wong, Go Shut-Fung, Christopher Chan Sai-Tang

 

Extreme Challenge is a decent example of the fighting-for-fighting’s-sake martial arts film that doesn’t get made anymore in Hong Kong. It feels like a throwback to late 80s/early 90s American tournament movies with an Internet angle that really doesn’t get explored, but at least centers it in the new millennium. The fights are well choreographed, even if all the surrounding material is trite and shoddy at best…and this coming from Golden Harvest, who produced all of Jackie Chan’s most iconic films!

So, there’s a martial arts tournament called the World Wide Web Y2K Martial Arts championship. It’s organized by the Power Net Show Internet Corporation, with financial backing from another corporation called Champion Athletes, which is looking to expand business into East Asia. The tournament is organized by Karen Li (Jacqueline Li, of Gorgeous and Tai Chi Warrior), who is in charge of both the fight logistics and supervising the technical side. The current martial arts champ and favorite to win is Ian Maxfield (Paul Rapovski, of Hitman), although the corporate sponsors would like an Asian champion this time in order to appeal to the upcoming new demographic. Thus, the organizers will have their eye on Fang Jin (Yeung Chuen-Ai), one of the favorites to win.

There are two more notable Chinese participants. The first is a female fighter, Tang Ning (Patricia Ja Lee, of Power Rangers Turbo and Power Rangers in Space), who wishes to honor her late master by participating in the tournament. The second is Kuang Kin (Ken Chang, of Sunshine Cops and The Legend of the Flying Swordsman), who hails from the same school as Fang Jin. Just what are his motives for entering? I dunno, although the bulk of the film is shot (or dubbed) in English, the Chinese characters switch to Cantonese whenever they talk amongst themselves (and the version I watched lacked subs).

So, the tournament commences and there’s some drama as Karen Li tries to shore up the results by fixing the “random” computer-generated match-ups and even paying some people to take the fall. For example, when the preferred candidate for the win is to fight against a female fighter, Karen has it switched so that Champion Athletes’ new spokesperson won’t be regarded as a woman beater. That kind of thing.

Tournament movies don’t really give themselves over to lengthy reviews because the plots usually have one act worth of story and the rest is fighting with a couple of shallow character moments. That’s what we martial arts fans expect from these things, unless it’s The Quest, which manages to push the fighting all the way into the third act. Extreme Challenge is no different from the rest, so anyone expecting depth needs to refer themselves over to the first few Once Upon a Time in China movies or the works of Wong Kar-Wai. You’re not getting it here.

We’re here for the fighting, which wasn’t choreographed by Tung Wai himself, even though he directed the film. Instead, the action team consists of two former Jackie Chan stunt team members--Go Shut-Fung and Christopher Chan—and Jack Wong, who recently got award recognition for his work on Warriors of Future. Christopher Chan worked on a handful of Jackie Chan movies before moving over to Stephen Tung’s stunt team in the late 1990s. He’s since assisted Tung with films like Purple Storm; Mulan (the Vicky Zhao version, not the Disney remake); Seven Swords; and The Accidental Spy. His more recent efforts—Let the Bullets Fly and Ip Man: The Final Fight—suggest that he later switched over to Nicky Li Chung-Chi’s stunt team later on.

The first set piece and initial elimination round of the tournament is a sort of race where the fighters have to make it to a spot in the middle of a lake while not falling in ditches or into the water. The fighters trade blows while trying get a limited number of tokens that have to be inserted into a mechanism at the end point in order to move forward. There is lots of group fighting here, which is all well-staged. The second action sequence is a sort of a martial arts version of King of the Hill, where the sixteen or so fighters have to make their way up a structure while beating each other up, after which they’ll get a token and take a zipline to the finish line. The martial arts in this sequence is also quite good, although fans of Scott Adkins will be disappointed that he doesn’t fight more here.

The quarter-finals are a series of one-on-one weapons duels between the eight surviving combatants, which include our main characters, Scott Adkins, a Thai Boxer (Somchai Siabkuntod), a Japanese fighter (played by the director himself), and another female fighter (Nikki Powell, who squared off with Claire Forlani in The Medallion). Adkins does some nice work with the nunchaku. Rapovski impresses with his escrima skills. The others do respectable jobs with the pole.

The semi-finals are rather sketchy from a storytelling perspective, but the prolonged fight between Patricia Ja Lee and Yeung Chuen-Ai was really good, with just enough intensity and environment-assisted acrobatics to really make it one of the best fights of the movie. The finale pits the two remaining Chinese fighters against each other, and while it’s a good fight, I think I liked the previous one better. That said, some of the fights are hampered by out-of-place photographic effects, which suggest the filmmakers were learning about Microsoft Movie Maker and testing its features for the very first time. It’s stupid. It’s cheesy. It’s shallow. But I also lament that we don’t get any more of these movies out of Hong Kong and China anymore.

The Octagon (1980)

The Octagon (1980)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Karen Carlson, Lee Van Cleef, Art Hindle, Carol Bagdasarian, Tadashi Yamashita, Kim Lankford, Larry D. Mann, Kurt Grayson, Richard Norton
Director: Eric Karson
Action Director: Chuck Norris, Aaron Norris

 

The Octagon is an interesting film is that it was one of the contributors to the “Ninja Craze” that took international action movies by storm in the first half of the 1980s, and whose collateral effects can be seen to this very day. Everybody knows what a “ninja” is and has some mental image of a person in black (or white) clothing with a hood/mask leaving only an eye slit visible, armed with a katana. Although The Octagon was not the first Occidental film to feature those infamous spies/assassins—I’m sure that honor goes to You Only Live Twice—this movie, along with the following year’s Enter the Ninja, really helped ninja enter the Western pop culture lexicon. And given the movie’s release date of 1980, it was only appropriate that Chuck Norris play moviedom’s first American Ninja.

Norris plays Scott James, a former karate champion who retired from the ring after seriously injuring (killing?) his opponent during a match. The movie makes no reference to what his current profession is, although it is kinda sorta suggested that James either has experience in the military, or at least did a limited stint as a mercenary at some point. Or maybe he’s just the co-owner of the martial arts school he frequents—look for a young Ernie Hudson as one of the students there. Anyway, when we meet James, he and his friend (little brother?) A.J. (Art Hindle, of Porky’s and Black Christmas) are at the ballet, where James’s potential girlfriend Nancy (Kim Lankford) is performing.

After a night on the town—during which Nancy comes across as being particularly jittery—the couple retire to her house, where they are ambushed by ninja assassins. Nancy is killed, and we later discover that every inhabitant of the house had been murdered previous to their arrival. James later learns from A.J. that her brother had been arrested a few days prior for murdering a European diplomat. Scott suspects that ninjitsu antics are afoot (well, duh!) and goes over to his old friend McCarn (Lee Van Cleef, who later was cast in the ninja-themed series “The Master”).

McCarn runs an outfit that specializes in hiring out bodyguards and doing mercenary work, albeit only jobs that involve anti-terrorism. Both him and James have a history together, although their dialog is elliptical enough that I can’t quite figure out what it is—thus my earlier speculation about James having done some mercenary work in the past. McCarn doesn’t know enough to set James on the right path, but their story isn’t over yet.

Enter Justine (TV actress Karen Carlson), the wealthy heiress to a European newspaper empire. Her dad was murdered by terrorists a few years ago, and now she uses her money and influence to track down and kill terrorists all over the world. Her next target is Seikura, who happens to be Scott James’s former ninja brother. Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita, of Za Karate and Soul of Chiba) runs a ninja training camp in Central America, which routinely receives both mercenaries and terrorists as pupils. Justine tries to convince Scott in a myriad of ways to get involved, although he refuses to work directly with her.

James eventually does get involved, but of his own accord. He signs up to mercenary outfit run by a guy named Doggo (Kurt Grayson, another TV veteran), who is one of Seikura’s principal sources of income. McCarn is out to get Doggo, mainly because the latter does business with anyone with money, independent of their political or moral stances (which would include terrorists). And when James shows up at Doggo’s compound yammering about ninjas, it’s going to get both him and Justine into trouble. And when the latter convinces A.J. to get involved in the Seikura mission, too, James is going to have some good reasons to see this through to the end.

The Octagon has a lot more story than one might expect from an 80s ninja movie. While not necessarily incidental to the plot, the ninjas themselves kinda run in parallel to the Scott James mercenary storyline until they finally intersect in the third act. Until then, it’s mainly about James trying to investigate Doggo in hopes of learning more about Seikura’s training camp, with lots of dialog being thrown around about “getting involved” and “embracing a cause.” There’s a subplot about A.J. falling into Justine’s “clutches,” which presents him with a cause to live (or die) for—fighting terrorism—and get out of James’s shadow. On one hand, it is rather silly for someone like A.J. to think he could fight the anti-terrorism cause: there is only so much a black belt in karate (or tang soo do) can do against a small ninja army (or any terrorist with connections to international crime).

On the same token, however, this year saw the invasion of Ukraine by Russia under the command of Vladimir Putin. Despite the fact that the United States has not directly involved itself in the fighting itself, many former soldiers and Special Forces operatives have seen the plight of the Ukrainian citizens and felt the call to go there and offer their services on a volunteer basis, sometimes as instructors, others on the front lines or in guerrilla tactics. And although Putin isn’t using ninja in this particular invasion, I can see the parallel between Scott James and A.J. getting involved in the anti-terrorist game and ex-military types flying to Poland, crossing the border into the Ukraine, and making a stand against international bullies.

The problem is that for a movie with this many characters and this much story, there isn’t enough information for us to really get a feel for what’s going on. Moreover, a lot of characters’ motivations just don’t make any sense. In one scene, Scott James meets a fellow named Tibor (Larry Mann, yet another TV veteran), an Israeli fur coat maker who moonlights as a financier of Doggo’s and Seikura’s operations. When he meet him, he tells Scott that he joined the mercenary game after his little brother was murdered in the Munich Olympics. But if that’s the case, why would he get involved with two outfits that encourage (and train) terrorists? Wouldn’t he be better off working with McCarn instead?

I also had a difficult time figuring out the motivations of the character Aura (The Aurora Encounter’s Carol Bagdasarian). We meet her at Seikura’s training camp and she seems to be a pretty apt pupil of the ways of ninjitsu. But as soon as she leaves, she wants out of the mercenary game before even getting her first mission. She tells us at one point that she wanted a cause to fight for and joined Doggo’s mercenary team for that reason, but at what point did she determine that it was no longer what she wanted for her life? Was it when Seikura’s ninja enforcer (Richard Norton, in one of two roles) murdered a man for trying to desert the camp in front of her? Maybe, but like a lot of characters in this movie, the motivations are rather murky.

The fights were handled by Chuck and Aaron Norris, although I suspect that Richard Norton had a lot to do with staging the finale. After all, tang soo do—Chuck’s original style—isn’t known for its weapons forms. On the other hand, Norton’s training in goju-ryu had a strong kobudo, or weapons, element to it and Norton learned how to use a number of weapons, including the katana, the bo staff and the sai swords. So, in addition to playing the lead ninja enforcer, Kyo, I’m pretty sure that Norton helped choreograph the weapons fights (although he only gets billing as a stuntman).

The way Norton tells it, he met Norris back in ’78 when a friend of his brought Chuck over to Australia participate in the local martial arts demonstrations while promoting his Good Guys Wear Black. Norton was doing weapons demonstrations on the same circuit at that time. The two hit it off and Norris told Norton to look him up if he ever found himself in California. Besides teaching martial arts, Norton also worked as a bodyguard for a number of singers whenever their tours brought them to Australia. One of them, country music legend Linda Rondstadt, invited Norton to be her personal bodyguard, which resulted in him flying out to California. There, he looked up Chuck, who was doing pre-production for The Octagon. As he had the right weapons background for this kind of a movie, Norris brought him on board.

The action is limited for the first two acts. There is a brief scuffle between Chuck and some ninja assassins in one of the early scenes. The action dies down as his Scott character investigates the world of mercenaries, although there is a short fight between him and said soldiers-for-hire (including Richard Norton in a second role). There is a second scuffle between Chuck and the ninja in a hotel room, after which we get the big finale in which Chuck storms Tadashi Yamashita’s ninja compound.

As a kid, I kinda let the earlier scenes just sort of “wash over” me as I waited for that big finale. I’m pretty sure that a lot of martial arts fans can (and do) forgive The Octagon’s sluggish pacing and muddled storytelling on account of the climax, which is 20 minutes of Chuck Norris killing ninja. There is lots of spin kicking, sword swinging and judo takedowns as Norris fights one ninja after another, before having big showdowns with both Kyo (Norton) and Seikura (Yamashita). The former is one of those “Best Chuck Norris Moments” fights, especially because it was the first time since his fight with Bruce Lee years before that he really had an opponent worthy of his abilities[1]. The two go at it with katana and sai swords, with Norton getting in a lot of good hits against a typically-unbeatable Norris. This fight, although not the last, is certainly better than his final throwdown with shorin-ryu master Tadashi Yamashita, who has done better work in other movies. But there is enough good in those last 20 minutes that I can understand why so many people place this in their top 3 (or 5) Chuck Norris films of all time.

---

[1] - I suppose the previous year’s A Force of One did in the form of Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, but I think their fights could have been better.

Capsule Reviews of 2001 in Film

Sino-Dutch War 1661 (2001) 
aka Hero Zheng Chenggong
Chinese Title: 鄭成功
Translation: Zheng Cheng Gong

Starring: Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo, Jiang Qin-Qin, Du Zhi-Guo, Yoko Shimada, Xu Min, Zhang Shan, Yang Guang
Director: Wu Zi-Niu
Action Director: Lin Luen

Interesting historical melodrama about the historical personage Koxinga, the military leader who more or less established Taiwan as a part of China during the early days of the Qing Dynasty. Despite the film's title, the movie focuses on Koxinga's adult life and military career, with the titular conflict really coming into in the fore only in the last act.

Koxinga, born Zheng Sen, is played by Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo, who was still doing better work on TV than he was doing in film at this point. Zheng Sen returns home from the military academy just as the Manchurians have taken over the Beijing, forcing the Ming Emperor to flee to Southern China--this is 1646. The Emperor has set up shop in the Fujian Province, across the sea from Taiwan. Zheng Sen's father, Zheng Zhilong (Du Zhiguo), is a Ming General and Loyalist. Zheng Sen is promoted to high military rank and given the title Imperial Namekeeper, with his name changed by the Emperor to Zheng Chenggong. He is sent into the mountains to look for turncoats in the Imperial Army stationed there.

What he doesn't know is that the entire batallion stationed there has already switched sides...at the behest of his own father. He makes it out of Shaanxi alive thanks to his adopted sister (Bloody Brothers' Jiang Qin-Qin). After confronting his father about it, his dad heads to Beijing to accept his promised post, only to be betrayed by the Qings and executed. The Qing Army finally invades Fujian and ultimately conquers all of China. Zhen Chenggong remains a Ming Loyalist military commander, although instead of leading uprisings against the new dynasty, he builds up a navy in order to kick the Dutch out of Taiwan.

The most interesting part of this film, historically speaking, is how the Qing Emperor ultimately decides to leave Chenggong alone. He hasn't professed loyalty to the Qing Dynasty. He hasn't shaved his head and started wearing the queue. But the Emperor is content to leave him alone. Why? Because he's Chinese and it's better to leave your enemy alone if they can defeat a greater enemy--the non-Chinese Dutch (naturally)--for the benefit of all of China. In the end, we learn that by the third generation of the Zheng family in Taiwan, they professed loyalty to the Qings and Taiwan was absorbed into the empire without any unnecessary shedding of blood. Very savvy on the Emperor's part.

There are a handful of action sequences, namely the Siege of Fuzhou and the initial attack on the Dutch stronghold in Taiwan (the rest of the war is glossed over in intertitles at the end). The action was staged by C (or D)-level action director Lin Luen, whose filmography includes such obscure films as Big Job (with Chin Siu-Ho) and Watch Out (with Chin Kar-Lok). The battle scenes are okay, although sometimes the editing is too choppy. Vincent Zhao does get to perform some wushu swordplay in these sequences, with him looking good during the Siege sequence and the finale battle, which pits him against the Dutch general. I like Vincent Zhao a lot and would put this in the center of the Vincent Zhao bell curve.

Manhattan Midnight (2001)
Chinese Title: 午夜曼哈頓

Translation: Midnight Manhattan

Starring: Richard Grieco, Michael Wong Man-Tak, Maggie Q, Stacia Crawford, Joe Rejeski, Wong Kam-Kong
Director: Alfred Cheung
Action Director: Bruce Law

Interesting shot-on-digital-cam film (apparently the first) from long-time HK actor-writer-director Alfred Cheung, which was shot with a mixed cast and crew on location in New York (no mention of Vancouver in the closing credits). Richard Grieco (whom I know the most for the 007 send-up If Looks Could Kill) plays "M", a former SEAL-turned-hitman who's operating out of NYC. He's hired to off a pretty young business analyst named Susan (Maggie Q, credited as Maggie Quigley on the Brazilian DVD cover), but he accidentally kills her twin-sister-that-nobody-knew-about, Hope, instead. Feeling that he owes his victim, he decides to protect his quarry instead.

The first half plays like a pretty standard hitman-goes-good thriller, not too unlike The Replacement Killers by way of Maximum Risk. The latter comes about in the form of scenes of "M" visiting Hope's mother and learning about the twin sister that was given up for adoption at birth. The second half grows muddled, which has some supernatural overtones, an unconvincing love story (Susan figures out M's reasons for protecting her, but isn't repulsed by him for a moment), a subplot about the FBI trying track down M, and his attempts to kill his boss (with the help of his colleague and fellow SEAL, played by Michael Fitzgerald Wong). There is something of a Vertigo-esque angle within the romantic subplot about Grieco's character trying to convince himself that Susan is Hope by having her use her sister's clothes, but it's not really shown (just sort of talked about in retrospect).

Grieco gives a one-note performance, speaking all his dialog with the same smooth whisper. The only time he shows a bit of life is when he's talking to Danny, Michael Wong's estranged son. Maggie Q is fine in a dual role as a cynical (and worldly) mistress and an upbeat, naïve college girl. Maggie Q fans will be happy to learn that she does have some brief nudity during a sex scene with Grieco--making it the second film of hers where I've seen that, alongside Naked Weapon. Michael Wong is Michael Wong: you love him or hate him...or simply love to hate him.

There are a handful of gunfights staged by Bruce Law, which aren't bad. I have to give the film points for not going soft of the violence: there are lots of squibs and bloody gunshot wounds in this film, so kudos there. In the final gunfight, one character takes several bullets to the arm, causing the entire thing to detach from the shoulder(!). The two-fisted gunplay isn't always convincing as it is in most HK bullet ballets, but I thought the carnage itself made up for it.

I wish the final shot was explained a bit better. I think I know what's going on, but it's mainly a succession of images with Hope's poetry being recited in the background, so I'm not sure.

Bullets of Love (2001)
Chinese Title: 不死情謎
Translation: Immortal Riddle

Starring: Leon Lai Ming, Asaka Seto, Terence Yin Chi-Wai, Michael Chan Wai-Man, Frankie Ng Chi-Hung, Saki Hayawaka, Richard Sun Kwok-Ho, Ronald Cheng Chung-Kei
Director: Andrew Lau
Action Director: Lee Tat-Chiu

Well, what do you know? An Andrew Lau film I actually liked! I generally don't care about his movies, as they are all style and no substance, from the story to the action sequences. Legend of the Fist was an exception to the latter because of Donnie Yen, but that film's story was just not very compelling. Conversely, Infernal Affairs had a great story (probably due more to the writers than to Lau), although its nomination for Best Action Choreography is probably the biggest head scratcher in the history of that award.

Leon Lai plays Inspector Sam, who's trying to bust a pair of human-and-drug trafficking brothers. He manages to catch one, and his prosecutor girlfriend, Ann (Japanese actress Asaka Seto), is able to put the man behind bars for five years. However, the brother orders the girlfriend's hit--the assassin being a mysterious Japanese woman. Years later, Sam has retired from the force and is living in the sticks with his two uncles (one of whom is played by Michael Chan Wai-Man). He meets a Japanese woman, You (Seto again), who looks exactly like Ann. The two gradually fall in love, although we the audience know that You is the assassin. She became obsessed with Sam while stalking his girlfriend before the kill. It is only a matter of time before Sam discovers who she really is.

The first and last twenty minutes of the film are heavily stylized, while the middle act, where Sam and You get to know each other, feels like an entirely different film in terms of tone, editing, photography, etc. That said, I felt myself caring about the characters and anxious about their fates. Very novel for an Andrew Lau movie! Things get extremely bleak and bloody in the last ten minutes, which is sad, because I genuinely like the characters. Despite having a credited action director (frequent Lau collaborator Lee Tat Chiu), there is little action and nothing very flashy--straightforward gunplay, a few knife slashes, and a single wire-assisted jump kick. Recommended.

The King Boxer (2000)

The King Boxer (2000)
Chinese Title: 天下無敵掌門人
Translation: Invincible Head of the World

 

Starring: Chin Ka-Lok, May Kwong Man-Chun, Kiki Sheung Tin-Ngo, Eddy Ko Hung, Billy Chow Bei-Lei, Chun Yu Shan Shan
Director: Benny Ng Shiu-Hung
Action Director: Douglas Kung Cheung-tak

 

In some ways, I feel bad for Chin Ka-Lok. He never quite got his due praise for all of his skills and talents. Starting off his career for Sammo Hung’s Stuntman Association, we see him in supporting roles as early as 1985—he plays one of Jackie Chan’s SWAT buddies in Heart of Dragon. His relationship with Jackie Chan would lead him to be Chan’s occasional kicking double whenever the choreography called for something out of Chan’s skill set. He got his chance to really show his stuff onscreen in Mr. Vampire 4. Sadly, despite numerous attempts to be the Next Jackie Chan (Nite Life Hero; Little Hero on the Run) and the Next Jet Li (Martial Arts Master Wong Fei Hung; The Green Hornet), he failed at all attempts to become bankable lead actor.

Chin seemed to accept his lot in life and by 2002, was focusing his efforts mainly behind the camera (although he gets some good supporting roles here and there). He quickly rose to become one of the most respected action directors in the business and the head of the Hong Kong Stuntman Association. In the past twenty or so years, Chin Ka-Lok has been nominated for Best Action Choreography about 12 times, but has never taken home a single award. Heck, in 2013, he got three of the five nominations and still lost to Jackie Chan. Thankfully, it hasn’t all been for naught: he took home a Taiwanese Golden Horse Award for Best Action Choreography in 2012 for Motorway.

The King Boxer was a co-production of My Way Film Company—a low-budget HK outfit that produced films like Angel on Fire and Love & Sex in Sung Dynasty—and the short-lived Wo Ping Creation Team (see Chinese Heroes). It is, as far as I can tell, the last real attempt for Chin Kar-Lok to make it as a leading martial arts hero. Sadly, the effort was mediocre at best.

Chin Kar-Lok plays the son of the wealthiest man in town, a banker. Dad would like Chin to follow in his footsteps and carry on the family name. Chin, on the other hand, kinda sorta wants to be a martial arts hero, but is actually too lazy to really do anything about it. So, he goes around getting in fights that he either buys his way out of, or wins by sheer luck and coincidence.

Meanwhile, there is a big rivalry between the town’s two major kung fu schools. One of them is led by Eddie Ko Hung (Hitman in the Hand of Buddha) and the other by Billy Chow (Fist of Legend). During a martial arts tournament, Ko Hung is defeated by Chow and kicked into a river, after which he disappears. The terms of the tournament is that the winner would get to take over the land belonging to the other school, so Ko Hung’s wife (TV actress Kiki Sheung) and his three daughters are really in trouble.

Chin Kar-Lok somehow bumbles his way into the Eddie Ko’s family, being named the inheritor of the family school despite not actually knowing martial arts. He actually falls for one of the daughters, Carmen (May Kwong, of Wan Chai Empress and So Close), and is bamboozled, Old Testament-style, into marrying the older daughter thinking it’s her. The older daughter is actually in love with one of Billy Chow’s students. Chow also has a man on the inside in order to sew discord in the family. Chin starts learning kung fu from the matriarch, but is too much of a goof-off to really progress fast enough to face Billy in a few weeks. And then a masked fighter appears to teach Chin some moves.

Despite the title, the film doesn’t have anything to do with the original King Boxer (or the Meng Fei film with the similar title). As you might notice, there are a lot of elements borrowed from The Prodigal Son, as we learn that not only Chin’s character, but his dad, pay for him to win fights. Much of the film is about Chin Ka-Lok goofing around and getting into the trouble, occasionally romancing Carmen when the opportunity presents itself. After a promising first 15 minutes or so, the film doesn’t really pick up the pace until the hour mark when Chin starts training with the masked fighter—really just Eddie Ko in disguise.

Because this is a comedy and Chin Ka-Lok is playing a fellow who never really learned kung fu for anything constant length of time, it generally looks like Chin is fighting below his actual physical abilities, which is unfortunate. He does display some decent comedic timing while staff fighting with a mouse in his clothing, but the rest is just silliness and mugging. There are some nice exchanges of moves here and there, but if you want peak Chin, go see Martial Arts Master Wong Fei Hung and Little Hero on the Run instead. There’s some good choreography from the rest of the cast in the opening kung fu tournament sequence, with Eddie Ko and Billy Chow making the best showing for themselves.

The finale is set in and on top of a multi-level bamboo scaffolding as a bunch of fighters fight for the hand of Carmen in marriage, including Billy Chow. Chin Ka-Lok eventually joins the fray, having taught himself tai chi chuan a few minutes earlier—the idea is that Chin’s character has a natural gift, not unlike Stephen Chow needing his Qi cleared in Kung Fu Hustle. Choreographer Douglas Kung wisely keeps the wire tricks to a minimum in this sequence and the site of Billy Chow fighting inside a bamboo platform will remind some viewers of the finale of Mr. Canton and Lady Rose. And like that film, Billy Chow and his superior kickboxing steal the show from the lead actor. There’s a brief Drunken Master 2/Young Master moment when Ka-Lok becomes invincible after eating wasabi, but it’s really just a pointless gag. And that really describes the film on the whole: some good choreography here and there, but derivative of other, better films and ultimately just unnecessary.

Highlander: Endgame (2000)

Highlander: Endgame (2000)

Starring: Christopher Lambert, Adrian Paul, Bruce Payne, Lisa Barbuscia, Donnie Yen, Jim Byrnes, Peter Wingfield, Damon Dash, Beatie Edney
Director: Douglas Aarniokoski
Action Director: Donnie Yen

 

Back in the late 90s and early 00s, mainly before I left for my religious mission in September ’01, my friends and I did our very best to support Asian actors in Hollywood. We saw Black Mask in the theater…twice. I saw both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Rush Hour 2 no fewer than three times at the cinema. Hell, we even paid weekend evening prices to watch Chow Yun-Fat in Anna and the King. We did our best to show our support to those from Hong Kong who tried their hand at Hollywood.

It was that same mentality that drove us to watch Highlander: Endgame at the theaters, despite none of us being fans of the franchise. To be perfectly honest, in 2000, all I could recall about Highlander was the director’s cut of the infamous subway sequence from Highlander 2: The Quickening. But, Donnie Yen was making his Hollywood debut in this movie—far less auspicious than Jackie Chan’s return to the Silver Screen in Rush Hour and Jet Li’s villainous take in the popular Lethal Weapon franchise. But work is work, and Yen’s Hong Kong career was in a bit of a slump by that time. So, we were just glad to see him working at all.

The movie opens with an older lady being killed by a bomb inside of an antique shop. That lady is Rachel Ellenstein (Sheila Gish, reprising her role from the first Highlander), the adopted daughter of Connor MacLeod (Mortal Kombat’s Christopher Lambert). MacLeod is obviously heartbroken to lose the closest thing to immediate family that he’s had in centuries, so he heads over to The Sanctuary, where Immortals go to spend eternity in a sort of forced slumber.

Some years later, a bunch of Immortals led by Jacob Kell (Bruce Payne, of Passenger 57) raid the Sanctuary and murder everyone there, both the normal humans who guard it and all of the Immortals, too. We learn that Kell was the son of a maniacal clergyman back in 16^th century Scotland who had Connor MacLeod’s mother burned at the stake for witchcraft. I guess giving birth to a son who can survive getting killed in battle would raise a few eyebrows at that time. In his subsequent bloodlust, MacLeod slays Kell’s father and runs Kell himself through, too. Unbeknownst to both of them, Kell was an Immortal, too.

The story switches back to Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul, who starred in the Highlander TV series), who has had dreams of IMPORTANT STUFF happening, even though he’s not quite sure what’s going on. He learns from a colleague, Methos (Peter Wingfield, also from the series), about the bloodbath at the Sanctuary, which he didn’t even know existed. Thinking Connor is dead, he visits the ruins of the MacLeod antique shop, where he is attacked by his ex-wife, Kate (Serpent’s Lair’s Lisa Barbuscia), and Kell’s minions. There’s a big fight and Duncan is eventually knocked out the window and impaled on a spike. A Shady Van comes to take his body away.

The Van belongs to a group known as The Watchers, mortals who make sure that the Immortals are playing The Game by the rules and not interfering with mortal affairs. Following the sacrilegious attack on the Sanctuary, there is now a shortage of Immortals and The Watchers are volunteering Duncan to be the first member of a new establishment. He gets saved and finds out about what he’s up against: although Duncan MacLeod has about 180 kills and Connor MacLeod had around 270, Jacob Kell has racked up more than 600. The odds are stacked against him…

Highlander: Endgame was meant to the be the Stark Trek: Generations of the franchise, allowing the movie MacLeod (Connor) and the television MacLeod (Duncan) to share the screen for the first time. The result is lukewarm. There really isn’t much of a plot: Jacob Kell wants to make Connor MacLeod’s eternity miserable and Duncan gets caught up in the middle. That’s about it. About half of the running time is dedicated to flashbacks detailing the time that Connor and Duncan spent together back in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, while the other half is spent with the small kernel of a main storyline and a couple of subplots that go absolutely nowhere. That said, I’m sure that Highlander fans were glad to see their two leading men spend as much time together onscreen as they do here.

The fault belongs to writers Eric Bernt and Gillian Horvath. The former is best known for Hollywood action films like Romeo Must Die and Surviving the Game. Those aren’t really the best written movies in the genre, but the former had a particularly complex story and the latter was a decent Most Dangerous Game rip-off. Horvath has spent the vast majority of her career working for TV, which is basically what this movie feels like: an extended TV episode (or made-for-TV movie). The extensive flashbacks combine with the thin plot to kill any forward momentum, which gives it that less-urgent TV episode feel.

The acting is just okay. Christopher Lambert is his usual self. If you like him in other things, you’ll like him here. If you don’t, this movie won’t change your mind about him. Adrian Paul’s performance is a bit uneven, as if there were a difference between TV acting and film acting and he hadn’t figured it out yet. Lisa Barbuscia is mainly around to look pretty and occasionally show off skin, which she also did in Serpent’s Lair. Then there’s Bruce Payne, once again overacting a storm like his notorious performance in Dungeons and Dragons. I thought he overacted with a bit more nuance in Passenger 57, but by 2000, the man was completely unhinged. I guess you need him to provide a counterweight to Lambert’s understated muttering.

Donnie Yen was the film’s action director and also has a supporting role as an immortal named Jin Ke. Yes, that Jin Ke. The same one who tried to assassinate the Emperor Qin. The same guy who was the subject of the critically-acclaimed The Empress and the Assassin. The same one who was the inspiration for Jet Li’s character in Zhang Yimou’s Hero. That guy. According to Donnie Yen’s website: “Yen contributed to the development of his character. Inspired by the assassin who fails (and appearing recently in The Emperor and the Assassin), Yen gave Jin Confucian values and made him an honorable man. Look for him in fight sequences and dramatic scenes.” [1]

What that basically means is that he gets two short fight scenes, a couple of lines of dialog, and then gets killed in a particularly ignominious way. I mean, do any of us really believe for two seconds that Bruce Payne can kill a sword-wielding Donnie Yen in a single blow? No. The entire scene in which Donnie kicks the bucket is so stupid that even 18-year-old me wanted to scream, “[Eff] you, movie!”

That said, the fight scenes aren’t bad. Donnie’s first fight has him doing his trademark double jumping back kick and a few other quick kicks. During the melee between Duncan MacLeod and Kell’s minions, Yen shows up wielding a kwan do and has a one-on-one with Adrian Paul. There is some good weapons choreography here, especially by Hollywood standards. The two eventually go at it hand-to-hand and both do some nice, complex wing chun-esque handwork—Donnie also unleashes his other trademark move, the jumping back kick. Sadly, the scene is interrupted by Bruce Payne and after that, there’s little reason for martial arts fans to continue watching. If you’re not a Highlander fan, just watch Donnie’s scenes on Youtube and move on.

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[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20040609144451/http://donnieyen.com/films/2000_highlander.htm

Sci-Fighter (2004)

Sci-Fighter (2004)

 

Starring: Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Aki Aleong, Lorenzo Lamas, Daneya Mayid, Christine Rodriguez, Chris Cassamassa, Rebekah Chaney, Gokor Chivichyan, Simon & James Kim, Eric Lee
Director: Art Camacho
Action Director: Art Camacho, Eric Lee, Joe Perez

Sci-Fighter is one of those unfortunate movies where the idea looks good on paper, the cast and crew are capable of enough of doing the premise justice, and yet the film just flops at every single turn. It’s a disparaging sight to watch an idea with potential self-destruct in front of your very eyes, with little visible explanation of how director-choreographer Art Camacho and lead actor Don “The Dragon” Wilson could not notice how spectacularly they were failing.

The film follows the story of kung fu teacher/professional kickboxer Jack Tanaka (Wilson, of Black Belt and Capitol Conspiracy). His dad, James Tanaka (Aki Aleong, of Braddock: Missing in Action 3 and The Quest), is a computer engineer for the government, whose pet project of the moment is a virtual reality system for training agents in combat—cue a glorified cameo by Lorenzo Lamas as one of said agents. Jack Tanaka has his hands full at the moment with his adolescent son, Brad (Daneya Mayid, who showed up in Kickboxer: Vengeance), who’s acting out in the aftermath of his mom’s untimely death. You know, throwing parties without dad’s permission, drinking beer, and *gasp!* kissing girls…in a jacuzzi!

James has a better time communicating with Brad than his dad does, and has come up with a way to try to bridge the gap: for Brad’s birthday grandpa gives him a “home version” of the combat simulator that Brad and Jack can play together and maybe bond a little over beating up virtual video game characters. At first, Jack is about as protective of Brad as Marlin is over Nemo. But then Brad plays the game by himself and gets trapped in it, so Jack has to go inside and beat all the levels in order to rescue his son.

There’s not a whole lot of plot: Jack and Brad have to get in numerous fights with different “digital” fighters (played by real-life martial artists) while James and his assistant, Sally (Cynthia Rothrock), try to fix the game and help from the outside. There is some talk about a computer virus infecting the game, which is why the main boss of the film is different from the main boss of the game…but it really doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of the story. The acting is as questionable as any other Don Wilson movie, with the standout being Aki Aleong (as expected—not that he does great work, but he’s the most talented actor of the bunch).

The problem with this film—and we’re talking a movie that currently holds a 2.7 out of 10 on the IMDB—is that Art Camacho’s action direction is completely all over the place, while Don “the Dragon” Wilson fails to make a decent showing for himself. Besides the father-son reconciliation story, the movie sort of purports to be about how kung fu is a way of life. That’s fine and, considering that Don Wilson studied Pai Lum Kung Fu under his brother, it would be a nice change of pace for him to integrate some classical forms into his screen fighting. Except that never happens. Don Wilson does the same old (slow) punches and kicks that he does in all of his film, with no sense of speed for performing in front of the camera. His fights have the same punch-stop-block-stop-kick rhythm of his 1990s films, even though this is 2004 and imported Hong Kong talent had already rendered that sort of thing obsolete. If you’re going to make a movie in which the character wants to glorify kung fu, then a) have him perform kung fu and b) have him look good doing it. The bizarre thing is that his son, played by a then-newcomer Daneya Mayid (a kenpo stylist), does all the complex and lightning-fast handwork that we’d expect from a kenpo stylist (see any Jeff Speakman film) and looks 100x better than the main star. How can we accept his dad as the main star and the “best” fighter in the film when he gets outshone by his son in every. Single. Fight?

Much like 1992’s Black Belt, there is a huge supporting cast of champion martial artists, whose accomplishments are placed beneath their names in the opening credits. Thankfully, unlike that movie, each of them gets his (or her) own fight to show off their skills. The showstopper is the legendary Eric Lee, an actor and action director from the old school days and choy li fut master. Choy Li Fut is known for its extensive weapons curriculum, of which Eric Lee has built his reputation in martial arts sequels. So when he shows up here, he performs a dizzyingly-fast demonstration of the saber-and-chain-whip combo, which is awesome. What is not awesome, however, is watching him get taken down by Wilson, who defeats him with slow and simplistic bo staff techniques. It’s almost insulting to the man’s talent.

There are other hiccups in the action direction, too. Many of the game’s levels are filled with random ninjas (a lá Bad Dudes) that show up and challenge our hero (or Brad) before the boss is confronted. Although some of those fights are adequate for a low-budget American film, sometimes they are hampered by nonsensical video game logic. Like how he beats Chris Cassamassa (Scorpion in Mortal Kombat) in a fight, advances to the next level, and is soon surrounded by ninjas who circle him and take cheap shots at his knees. He claims that he’s not able to fight back until his dad shows up as a hologram to up his level. There’s an attempt to explain this within the logic of the game, but it’s really stupid and just a waste of time and martial talent.

Speaking of which, do not expect much from Cynthia Rothrock in this film: she appears in a non-fighting role as Dr. Tanaka’s assistant and has a role in the video game as a goddess figure. As the latter, she has a brief wire-fu segment against the Computer Virus Fighter, which tries to look like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but looks slow and silly instead. Very awkward moment in the film. Even more awkward is the 1990s-series “Ghost Writer” level of CGI on display throughout the film.

After this movie, Don “The Dragon” Wilson would make two movies in 2006 and 2007, and then not headline another project until 2015’s The Martial Arts Kid. That placed Don in a supporting mentor role. Similarly, Cynthia Rothrock had a supporting role in the obscure 2007 film The Lost Bullet, followed by 2012’s Santa’s Summer House, and then 2013’s Badass Showdown, which also saw her in a mentor role. Although both Wilson and Rothrock continue to be busy on the film scene until the present, their days as the King and Queen of the twin Iron Thrones of DTV Martial Arts Cinema have long since ended. In many ways, we may see Sci-Fighter as their joint swan song to their reign atop the skeleton-covered hill that was the American B-movie scene. It is a great shame, then, that this film is so mediocre that showed neither Rothrock nor Wilson (nor Lamas, for that matter) at the top of their game.

Love & Sex in Sung Dynasty (1999)

Love & Sex in Sung Dynasty (1999)
Chinese Title: 宋朝風月
Translation: Sung Dynasty Wind Moon

 

Starring: Chin Siu-Ho, Chiu Lai-Yee, Monica Chan Fat-Yung, Elvis Tsui Kam Kong, Shing Fui-On, Phillip Ko Fei, Xing Yu
Director: Phillip Ko Fei
Action Director: Ko Chun Kit, Jimmy Ko Chim Mei

 

The early 1990s wire-fu boom more or less burned out after the failure of Tsui Hark’s The Blade in 1995. There were some stragglers who apparently didn’t get the memo, like Yuen Woo-Ping’s Tai Chi II and Sammo Hung’s Once Upon a Time in China and America. But then in 1998, the CGI-heavy comic book fantasy The Storm Riders came out and set the stage for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to change the game forever. And right smack dab in between those two groundbreaking movies was this obscure, low-budget wuxia film that harkened back to the earlier part of the decade, albeit with less wires and (practical) FX than your average Ching Siu-Tung film boasted. It really is the last old school wuxia to come out of Hong Kong, as far as I can tell.

Set during the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960 – 1279), this film follows the trials and travails of the Ouyang family, who belong to the Kunlun Clan of martial artists. There are two retired scholars with ties to Kunlun: Ouyang Hung (Elvis Tsui Kam Kong, of Prison on Fire 2 and Girls Unbutton) and his brother, Ouyang Tin. Hung has a son named Spring (Chin Siu-Ho, of Tai Chi Master and Fist of Legend) and Tin has a daughter named Ping (Chiu Lai-Yee, of Millenium Dragon and Black Cat in Jail). Spring and Ping have grown up together and clearly love each other, but their parents have different plans for them…but their names rhyme! They MUST be made for each other!

So, one day Spring and Ping are out on the town when they learn that the local General Pong (Shing Fui-On, of The Killer and Cheetah on Fire) is holding a martial arts tournament to find a husband for his daughter, Kuen (Monica Chan, of Full Alert and God of Gamblers II). Ping, dressed like a man, decides to participate as a joke and ends up winning. Although Kuen eventually discovers the ruse, it does give Ping a few days to stay at the Pong estate. Ping at Pong’s. Oh dear. She discovers that General Pong and Master Sheung are planning on a coup d’état to establish a new dynasty.

Ping finds the letter that would incriminate them and takes it back to show her Uncle Hung. At this point, Spring is studying kung fu at Shaolin for…reasons…so Ouyang Hung sends Ping to Shaolin to fetch him. While she’s gone, Pong’s two sons and his top killers—Heaven and Earth (one of whom is director Phillip Ko Fei)—are sent to the Ouyang estate to murder everybody. Since only Hung is there, he gets it. When Spring finds out, he declares a mission of vengeance against the Pong family and kidnaps Kuen during his first assassination attempt. Kuen eventually falls in love, while Ping is sent from Shaolin to Emei Mountain to improve her kung fu in the company of the nuns there.

Apparently, there are two versions of this movie: one presented by Jacky Wong of the Winners Workshop Production Company and another presented by Jeremy Cheung of My Way Film Company. Although both films apparently have the same cast, there are some slight differences in the crew. The version I watched was the Winners Workshop one, whose official English title is indeed Love & Sex in Sung Dynasty. While there is a fair amount of love, there is no actual sex in this movie. I’m guessing that the sex was filmed for the other version, although there’s nothing in the story that would suggest the presence of T&A. So, I’m guessing the story is slightly different.

Although a Jess Franco-ish approach to filmmaking—multiple versions for multiple markets with differing censorship laws—would explain why a movie with “Sex” in the title might actually be bereft of the same, it does not justify the myriad of plot holes in this movie. Early on, Ouyang Hung (the dad) mentions that his son Spring has been arranged to marry the daughter of Ching, husband of Master Sheung and a former flame of old Hung. We never actually see said daughter, and the arranged marriage never again shows up in the dialog.

The film also has a bizarre sense of time, as if Shaolin, Kunlun, Ermei and the capital are all located within a day’s walk from each other. At one point, Ping arrives at Shaolin and is directed to Emei, after which she meets up with Ping and Kuen shortly afterward. But then she talks about staying at Shaolin with her dad until he got sick and died, but we the viewer never see anything like that onscreen (or anything that might even suggest it). And how could she go to Ermei and vastly improve her kung fu over the course of a day? So, did only a couple of days pass? Or did months pass between Spring’s kidnapping Kuen and Ping’s reunion with them—which by this point, Kuen has fallen for Spring. I’m guessing a low budget film like this was made in a hurry, so re-writes to the script were just not possible.

The action in this version was brought to you by fourth-string action directors Ko Chun Kit and Jimmy Ko Chim Mei. Ko Chun-Kit was a long-time collaborator with Phillip Ko Fei, both in front of and behind the camera. His work as action director was limited to a handful of late period Ko Fei films and some adult/Cat. III movies, too. For co-choreographer Jimmy Ko, this was his only gig as fight choreographer. The movie resembles an early 1990s Ching Siu-Tung film, like Butterfly and Sword and The Heroic Trio, with lots of spinning and twirling to complement the more basic swordplay. There are some wire-stunts here and there, but I’m guessing the crew had neither the time or budget (or talent) to do anything complex, which is actually for the best. The swordplay is more grounded than most wuxia films of that decade, which is actually refreshing. The only thing about the action I didn’t like was the occasional blurry shot of Chin Siu-Ho rushing at (or past) the camera in order to convey the idea of super speed. Those moments were cheesy. Also, the final fight between him and Phillip Ko Fei is a bit too short. Does this movie deserve to be forgotten? I don’t know. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great. But I appreciate good ol’ fashioned balletic spinning and twirling at a time CGI was seeping into the HK movie scene.