Mortal Kombat (2021)

Mortal Kombat (2021)

Starring: Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Joe Taslim, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Mechad Brooks, Chin Han, Max Huang, Sisi Stringer, Laura Brent, Matilda Kimber
Director: Simon McQuoid
Action Director: Chan Griffin

Although I am one of the few people who do not actively hate Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, most people do and that was reflected in its disappointing box office returns against a higher budget than that of the first movie. Plans for a third film were underway—Robin Shou had signed a contract for a trilogy—but numerous script issues, cast changes, and what have you just kept on pushing the project back. The project was postponed indefinitely and one of the producers went so far as to try to sue Midway Games for claiming that a third film was still in the works. When Warner Brothers bought up New Line Cinema in 2008 and later Midway’s assets (Midway being the publisher of Mortal Kombat). They eventually opted to reboot the franchise rather than continue it.

The first attempt was when Warner and New Line hired director Kevin Tancharoen to adapt his Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short into a feature-length film. A budget of about 40-50 million dollars was allocated to the project, but it ended up not being enough for what Tancharoen wanted to do. About four years later in 2015, James Wan, best known for the Saw movies and the Conjuring universe, signed on as producer for a new adaptation. First-time Australian director Simon McQuoid signed on the following year to put Greg Russo’s script to film. It was another three years before the script was complete and the film began production.

The movie opens in early 17^th century Japan, where a ninja named Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanada, of Royal Warriors and Shogun’s Ninja) of the Ryo-Shirai Clan is spending some time with his wife and son. While he’s out getting water for the garden, a band of blue-clad ninja show up and start murdering everyone. When Hanzo returns, he finds his wife and son frozen to death outside the house…despite being a nice, sunny day. Hanzo goes into shinobi slaughter mode with the ninja that attack him before coming face to face with his family’s killer: Bi-Han (Joe Taslim, of The Raid: Redemption and The Night Comes for Us). The two go at it until Hanzo sustains mortal wounds from his own rope-dart-kunai weapon. His body bursts into flames the moment he expires and the lightning god Raiden shows up to rescue his infant daughter.

Cut to the present time. Cole Young (Lewis Tan, of Deadpool and Wolverine and Fistful of Vengeance) is a struggling MMA fighter whose greatest days are behind him. These days, he mainly gets his work playing the fall guy in smaller venues for up-and-coming fighters. After one such fight, he is visited by a mysterious guy named Jax (Mehcad Brooks, of “Supergirl” and “True Blood”), who notices his dragon-shaped birthmark during the fight. Later that evening, Young is having some ice cream with his wife and daughter when they witness something strange: a localized snowfall right above their table. The snow quickly becomes a deadly hailstorm and they are rescued by Jax, who drives them away from the source of the ice storm: Bi-Han, who now goes by the moniker Sub-Zero.

Jax eventually gets them trapped in an alley with Sub-Zero on the other side. He quickly pulls out some heavy-duty military-grade assault rifle and faces off with Sub-Zero, telling Cole to get his family to safety and look for a Sonya Blade in Gary, Indiana. Jax throws down with Sub-Zero, but exits the fight minus two arms (an obvious reference to Jax’s own fatality in “Mortal Kombat 2”). Cole takes his advice and goes to Indiana, where he meets Sonya (The Meg’s Jessica McNamee).

The following scene is an exposition dump where we learn that she and Jax were special forces operatives on the same team. They once met a target who had the same dragon-shaped birthmark that Cole (and Jax) had, who murdered the entire team with superhuman abilities before Sonya and Jax brought him down. They started researching these birthmarks, which ultimately led to the discovery of the Mortal Kombat tournament. I really would have liked the writers to explain a bit more how they would have uncovered this sort of thing. It might satisfy viewers unfamiliar with the games, but if there is a tournament between warriors of different realms, it would either have to be a very well-kept secret or it would completely re-write everything from world history to religion. Exactly where would records of the tournament and its participants be kept?

In any case, what our heroes don’t know is that the tournament acts as sort of a Hall Pass for different realms to invade others: win ten and the portal opens on a world scale. What they also don’t know (yet) is that Earth has lost the last nine to the Outworld and upcoming tournament will literally decide the fate of the entire world. And finally, what they don’t know (but will soon find out) is that the sorcerer Shang Tsung (Chin Han, of “American Born Chinese” and Skyscraper) has decided to stack the deck in his favor by having his forces (including Sub-Zero) kill all of Earth’s champions before the tournament can even begin. Can Sonya, Cole, and Kano (Josh Dawson), a greedy asshole mercenary in Sonya’s custody, find Raiden and the other champions before Shang Tsung gets to them?

What most reviews of this movie focus on in the inclusion of an original main protagonist—Cole Young—as an audience proxy. That is, someone for other characters to spout exposition to so that we the viewer know what’s going on. I am not sure why they did that—I mean, it was mandated by the execs at Warner Bros, but I’m not sure what made think that was a necessary thing. I understand that the Mortal Kombat game series has a lore that has gotten progressively more involved as the decades have passed, but for a first film based on a fighting game, there is not a whole lot of background that needs to be explained. The original film simply had Raiden as the exposition dump for the three main protagonists—Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya Blade. I don’t know why something similar couldn’t have happened.

The other aspect of the plot that sticks out is that the film ends before the actual tournament. The entire gist of the plot is that Shang Tsung is trying to kill everyone before the tournament, or at least as many possible. As I write this, it has been a week or so since the trailer for Mortal Kombat II has come out, which promises to focus on the actual tournament, apparently with the focus being on Johnny Cage. I appreciate that the film did not simply rehash the original Mortal Kombat film and am personally fine with the story they went with as an introduction to the world and rebooted lore. I mean, a handful of our favorite characters are present and get to fight each other, so whether the fights are in-tournament or out, it doesn’t matter too much to me.

The acting is decent. I like that they got an Asian actor—especially one with such a solid résumé as Tadanobu Asano—to play Raiden, the Chinese god of thunder. I do wish they had given him more of a personality, since his main purpose in the film is to complain about Earth’s fighters not being ready. I preferred Christopher Lambert’s take on the character, to be honest. Shang Tsung was distracting, not because of his performance—although I don’t think there is anyone in the business at the moment who can beat Cary Tagawa’s scowl—but his appearance reminded me too much of Takao Osawa’s General Wang Qi from the Japanese Kingdom films. One of the villains turns out to be Kabal, although his general appearance and portrayal in the film gave off serious Deadpool vibes (his super speed, his double swords, and the fact that his character never shuts up).

The fighting is a mixed back. On hand for the fight choeography was Chan Griffin, a Hollywood stuntman who has done stuntwork on a number of DC and Marvel films. As a fight choreographer, his résumé includes Alien: Covenant and Shazam! This appears to be his first “pure” martial arts film, although that ends up not really being the case here. You see, the action in a Mortal Kombat film is expected to find a healthy balance between the martial arts, the powers, and the graphic violence. The first film placed an emphasis on the fighting, with the powers reigned in (probably for realism’s sake), and the violence muted to bring in the largest possible audience. The second film kept the martial arts intact, but upped the power usage, and continued keeping the gore down.

But now the generation that grew up on the original Mortal Kombat games are now adults. As a result, it would make a bit more sense to thrown in the extra gore and go for a hard-R rating. And given producer James Wan’s pedigree, it would be surprising if it shot for PG-13. So, they do go in for the extra gore and apparently came very close to getting an NC-17 rating. There are some really gruesome fatalities, with the showstopper being the end of Nitara (Witchboard’s Mel Jarnson), who gets the wrong end—which would be any end—of Kung Lao’s hat.

So, they got the gore down. But the problem is with the fighting. The opening fight between Hanzo, the Lin Kuei, and Bi-Han is pretty cool, mixing kenjutsu and the rope-kunai weapon, which obviously resembles a rope-dart in usage. The finale, which pits Cole Young and a newly-resurrected Scorpion against Sub-Zero is even better, mixing fisticuffs and swordplay, plus some strong two-on-one choreography. The fights in between are just okay, however. Some of the training one-on-one’s, especially between Liu Kang and Cole, are decent. The other fights often feel like they depend too much on Special Moves rather than pure martial artistry. There is a balance to be had, but I don’t think that the fights between the Earth Champions and the Outworld fighters that make up much of the second half of the film found that balance.

Beyond that, the production values of the film are just fine. The movie was shot near Adelaide, Australia and they found some great locations to film in and around. The first film had a lot of scenes shot in Thailand. The second film took part of the filming to the cliff city of Petra. This one has some neat looking locations. The costumes are also very solid, although I think it is missing a lot of the color of the other films and the earlier MK games. The characters looks—especially Mileena—feels a lot “grittier” instead of colorful, which I personally lament. Also, Reptile shows up in his Saurian form, so I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get a green ninja. Goro as a CGI creation—with two stuntmen playing his arms and legs—actually looks good and has a better fight against Cole than he did against Johnny Cage, although Tan lacked Linden Ashby’s charisma and one-liners.

In the end, Mortal Kombat (2021) is a pretty good movie from my point of view. It starts and ends strongly, but doesn’t do well enough in the middle hour or so to completely overshadow the original. But with better effects, more graphic violence, and overall good production values, it may win over more than its fair share of fans, especially among the younger generations of MK fans.

4 Capsule Reviews of Bruce Le films

Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzemen (1977)
aka: King Boxer II; Enter the Game of Shaolin Bronzemen; Bruce's Last Battle
Chinese Title: 神龍猛虎
Translation: Divine Dragon and Fierce Tiger

Starring: Bruce Le, Lita Vasquez, Nick Cheung Lik, Ruby Anna, Nona Herrera, Vivian Velasco, Ernie Ortega, Pidoy Fetalino, Tsing Tong-Tsai, Ruben Ramos
Director: Joseph Kong
Action Director: Bruce Le(?)

Another Filipino film starring Bruce Le is notorious for its general ineptness and complete randomness. The film starts with Bruce Le performing the Five Animals Form to a red background. It then switches to Bruce Le doing the same Five Animals form in front of a waterfall. His master informs him that his training has ended and that his mission is to take one-half of a silver coin to a certain Mr. Santos. The silver coin is one half of a map to a treasure that was buried during World War II when the Japanese were occupying the Philippines. One party that wants the treasure if a criminal organization led by Ms. Oki (Lita Vasquez, of Treasure of Bruce Lee and Target Shaolin Master). She sends a hired fighter (Nick Cheung Lik) to fight Bruce, whose character is named Wong Chan-Lung. They meet a couple of times throughout the film, but Cheung Lik doesn't do anything.

Anyway, Chan-Lung eventually makes it to Mr. Santos's house, where the he is being beaten to death by a pair of dwarves. Chang-Lung scares the dwarves away and takes Santos's daughter, Vivian (Vivian Velasco, of Treasure of Bruce Lee) under his wing. He takes her to her aunt's house while he goes searching for Ms. Oki. This leads to a series of random encounters with a tribe of dwarves armed with sickles, the Shaolin Bronzemen (who show up and then disappear with no fanfare), and a fat lady masseuse who tries to kill Chan-Lung during a random moment of relaxation. They find the treasure, but it's already empty. Vivian is kidnapped by Ms. Oki's dwarf henchman and Wong eventually gets kidnapped, too. They are rescued by Vivian's friend, Nina (Nona Herrera, of Treasure of Bruce Lee), who pops up into the movie for...no reason. So, Ms. Oki responds by sending her dwarf minions to murder Nina and Vivian, resulting in Wong Chan-Lung going to Oki's house and slaughtering her and her martial arts minions...

Okay, so what was this movie about? I don't know. Ms. Oki immediately sends her henchmen to stop Wong Chan-Lung as soon as he finishes his training. How does she know about him. If she actually stole the treasure before it was dug up by the heroes, why does she even need to stop them. Theoretically, Wong and Nina would find the treasure and then not know who stole it, and that would be that. I mean, by attacking Wong Chan-Lung, Oki was opening herself to Righteous Kung Fu Justice later on.

And of course, the succession of scenes of Wong fighting the dwarves, the Bronzemen, the masseuse, and then Oki herself on a beach have no narrative build-up or establishing of how or why he got there, why he changed his clothes, or what it has to do with the scene before it. It is worse than Sister Streetfighter, where Etsuko Shihomi always was snooping around a place just in time for a fight to break out. And of course, there is the whole bit about Nina and what her character has to do with anything. Even better (or worse): the film was dubbed not by the Usual Suspects in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but a Filipino dubbing company, so all the characters speak English with Filipino accents, which makes it harder to understand the dialog.

The fight scenes were probably staged by Bruce Le himself and are just okay. Le himself looks pretty good in his fights, although the Filipino stuntmen are a lot more static than their Hong Kong/Taiwanese counterparts. The fight with the titular Bronzemen is pretty good, even if it has nothing to do with the moving surrounding it. I'm sure that B-movie enthusiasts will love the midget fight on general principle. What did the Medved brothers say? "Making fun of this movie is like kicking a dwarf?" Bruce Le doesn't plenty of that here. He also beats a flamboyantly-gay Yes Man to death like he did in Return of Bruce. The final fight has him beating up lots of stuntman, a Japanese fighter played by Ernie Ortega (Bruce the Super Hero and The Bloody Hero), and finally Lita Vasquez herself. It's fun and stupid, but most viewers will probably just focus on the latter. And I can't blame'em.

Return of Bruce (1977)
aka The Dragon Returns
Chinese Title: 忠烈精武門
Translation: The Gate of Loyalty and Bravery

Starring: Bruce Le, Meng Fei, Lo Lieh, James Nam Seok-Hoon, Nick Cheung Lik, Chan Lau, Chiang Tao, Elizabeth Oropesa
Director: Joseph Kong
Action Director: Bruce Le (as Kenneth Rivero)

Filipino film that was later edited into Concorde of Bruce (1982) aka Ninja vs. Bruce Lee. This one catches flack for being nonsensical, which I cannot argue with. Taiwanese star Meng Fei shows up for two scenes, including one absolutely random shapes fight, and then disappears from the rest of the film (even after events that would call for his return to the story). Heck, the climax completely not only opens a plot hole the size of the fat guy Bruce fights in the cemetery, but it introduces a completely new main villain (played by Lo Lieh) for...reasons?

Bruce Le plays Wong Lung, a Chinese guy from Hong Kong who comes to Manila to stay with his uncle. He learns that his uncle has since moved from his last reported address and just starts wandering around until he meets this orphan boy. The two are enjoying a meal when a girl* runs into the restaurant being chased by human traffickers. Wong Lung rescues her, thus bringing upon him the ire of the gang (including a guy some flamboyantly gay that he makes Wei Ping-Ao's character in Way of the Dragon look like a total Alpha Male). We also learn that the head of the gang's girlfriend, Lisa (Elizabeth Oropesa, who has racked up over 200 credits in her 50 years of acting), is actually an undercover cop working under Meng Fei. The head of gang also has his buyer (Protacio Dee, of Tiger Force and Bruce the Super Hero) and that guy's two Caucasian bodyguards staying at his place for an unspecified amount of time until they can move the girls.

Anyway, for reasons that are never explained--and would probably not make sense if they were--Boss Man cannot finish the deal of selling the girls to his buyer until he finishes some pending business with the local kung fu school, run by Nick Cheung Lik. Coincidentally, Nick's sister is the girl whom Wong Lung saved at the restaurant. And they are both the children of Wong Lung's uncle, whom we learn has been murdered by the gang. Wong Lung and Nick get into a number of fights with the gang, until Wong Lung accidentally kills one of their enforcers at a fight in a cemetery. Wong Lung is about to turn himself in to the authorities when the gang brings in a Japanese fighter (James Nam) to shore up accounts with the kung fu school. At that point, Wong Lung goes from "remorseful over killing" to "eliminate the bad guys with extreme prejudice."

What happens to Meng Fei's character? Why is the gang so interested in the kung fu school? Why can't they finish the deal with the buyers without resolving the kung fu school issue first? Why doesn't the police step in and arrest the bad guys after Lisa frees the girls near the end? All of those questions go completely unanswered in this movie. Instead, we get lots of fight scenes and Bruce Le going all vigilante at the end. The fights were staged by Kenneth Rivero, which apparently a pseudonym for Bruce Le himself. The fights were generally pretty simple in execution: Bruce (or Meng Fei or Nick Cheung Lik) gets attacked by one Filipino extra, he blocks a punch or two, punches the guy, the guy falls down, time for the next extra. Some of the one-on-one fights are more involved, like with Ruben Ramos (who uses a faux-Praying Mantis style), Chiang Tao (snake fist), James Nam ("karate" and katana blade), and Lo Lieh (the evil "Red Palm"). Those are choreographed reasonably well, especially by Bruce Le standards. I like watching Cheung Lik in action, he has some solid kicking skills. Although we see Bruce Le training with nunchaku and a snake spear, he never actually uses weapons in the fight sequences. Boo.

As a Bruce Le film, this is reasonably entertaining fight-fest. It doesn't make much sense, but the fights come at a reasonable clip and I've seen Le do worse than this.

 

My Name Called Bruce (1978) 
Chinese Title: 霹靂龍拳
Translation: Thunder Dragon Fist

Starring: Bruce Le, Cheung Man-Ting, Chiang Tao, Tong Kam-Tong, Kim Ki-Joo, Im Eun-Joo, Steve Mak Fei-Hung, Choe Seong-Gyu, Kim Ki-Beom, Lee Hang
Director: Joseph Kong
Action Director: Steve Mak Fei-Hung, Tong Kam-Tong, Lee Hang

In addition to Return of Bruce (which I reviewed above), this film was also incorporated into 1982's Concorde of Bruce, aka Ninja vs. Bruce Lee. This film actually tries to tell an actual story, even if it falters at doing so. Here we have a crime drama involving antique smuggling. The movie opens with a gang of robbers acting like agents from the South Korean equivalent of the CDC storming an antique score with some story about a deadly virus in the area. They convince the owner, Baldy (Kim Ki-beom), to get an emergency vaccine injection, which promptly knocks him out. They steal a priceless (and unaccounted for in the books) vase and bring it to their broker, Tiger (Choe Seong-gyu?), who hired them on behalf of another gang. That gang is led by Nifty (Chiang Tao), who show up to collect the vase dressed in ersatz KKK masks. They beat up the thieves, leaving only the leader (Kim Ki-joo) alive. 

The cops arrest him, but he won't snitch on his deceitful employers. The police chief (Yoon Il-joo) assigns Sergeant Lee (Im Eun-joo) to the case. Nifty orders his men, led by Lee Hang, to murder Tiger now that the police are following him. He gets ambushed twice, but is ultimately rescued (and arrested) by Sergeant Lee. Tiger becomes an informant for the police. About the same time, "Bruce" (Bruce Le) comes to South Korea from Hong Kong and starts asking around the various antique shops for Slasher (Kim Wang-guk), Nifty's middle man. Meanwhile, Sergeant Lee is trying follow Nifty's female client from Manila, Vivian (Cheung Man-Ting). Bruce eventually befriends Vivian and she starts to fall for him...or at least does so to manipulate him into stealing the vase for her. But Nifty isn't a powerful figure in the world of antique smuggling for nothing...

The main problem with My Name Called Bruce (besides the grammatially-awkward English title) is that the story is a bit dull. I mean, it has a story of sorts: A priceless antique vase is stolen. The police try to find the potential buyer and follow her to the man behind the smuggling ring. Meanwhile, a wild card figure of questionable allegiances shows up looking for the same person, albeit for murkier reasons. The two parties ultimately team up to take down the bad guys. The main problem is that the story is not told in a way that feels suspenseful. There is no ticking clock to the moment the vase will switch hands and will thus be (theoretically) lost forever. So it feels like the villains are just standing around doing nothing while Bruce and the police draw closer and closer to them. And that makes for a boring film whenever the fists aren't flying.

And sadly, the fists don't fly often enough. The fight scenes were staged by Mak Fei-Hung (who later went to the Mainland to choreograph Arhats in Fury), Tong Kam-Tong (who plays Chiang Tao's right-hand man and also choreographed Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu 2), and Lee Hang (Crack Shadow Boxers). Since this is a Korean co-production with a mostly-Korean cast, most everybody is trained in Taekwondo and the fights are especially kick-heavy. Actress Im Eun-joo had a solid filmography of South Korean kung fu movies and she does reasonably well for herself, especially in the last 15 minutes. Heck, even Bruce Le does better kicking in this movie than he does when he's choreographing himself. The only time the film really gets into shapes choreography is when he faces off with Chiang Tao at the end and Le starts doing some over-the-top Eagle Claw fighting. It's just a shame that there wasn't more of this.

Bruce vs. Bill (1981)
Chinese Title: 龍虎爭霸
Translation: Dragon and Tiger Struggle For Domination

Starring: Bruce Le, Bill Louie, Fung Yun-Chuen, Chiang Tao, Lau Yat-Fan, Tin Ching, Andy Lam Kwok-Wah, Ma Chang, Alexander
Director: Lam Kwong-Cheung
Action Director: Bruce Le(?)

I used to see the VHS for this one for rent at Hollywood Video on the Miracle Mile in Stockton, CA back in the 1990s. I never rented it because I was generally sticking to my comfort zone back in those days: Tai Seng releases, Revenge of the Ninja, etc. Watching it almost 30 years later, do I regret for not watching it earlier? No, not really. I sorta wish I had been more open-minded at the time, but whatever. This is a standard Brucesploitation film: not great, not God awful. Just there.

Bill Louie plays Wang Piao, a waiter living in...some period. I've seen one review suggest that this is set during the final days of the Qing Dynasty when Sun Yat-Sen was planning his revolution. There is talk of fundraisers in order to raise money for the good of the nation, but all the cars are from the 1970s and Bruce Le's character is wearing bell bottoms, but I really can't tell you when this is set. In any case, there is a safe filled with a million dollars and some shady types try to steal the key from one of the fundraiser guys. He is assaulted in a dark street at night and saved by Wang Piao. The guy bleeds out from getting his hand chopped off, but he gives the keys to the safe to Wang Piao and tells him to give them to Sun Kung.

The people after the keys are led by a foreigner named Tommy (Alexander, of The Dragon Lives Again). They show up at Wang Piao's restaurant and try buy the keys off of him, but he refuses. Tommy sends a bunch of beggars to kill him, but he beats them up, getting the attention of a wandering hitman, Chang (Bruce Le). Chang thinks he's abusing the disabled and the two fight. Tommy tries to get Chang to work for him and fight Wang Piao. They get into some fights before Tommy betrays Chang and the two have to team up to survive Tommy's army of hatchet-wielding killers. There are some traitors and some unfortunate deaths, but the two eventually team up again to beat Tommy's killers, played by Chiang Tao and Ma Chang.

There is a lot of action in this. Bruce Le is his usual self (Bruce Lee imitation mixed with some Hung Gar); I'm guessing he choreographed this, of which he does an adequate job. Bill Louie is an interesting character. He was a Chinese-American martial artist best known for founding the Chinese Goju-Ryu style of karate. Goju-Ryu was a combination of Okinawan Naha-Te (traditional fighting styles) and Chinese kempo/chuan fa, specifically derived from Fujian White Crane. What Bill Louie did was to study numerous Chinese styles and incorporate even more Chuan Fa into the Goju-Ryu he also learned. So Chinese Goju-Ryu is basically Okinawan karate with an extra helping of Animal forms. Louie looks better than Le does here, which is sorta funny. But his kicks look better than Le's and his punches pack more power than Le's. so there's that. Their fights aren't bad from a choreography perspective. The final fights are very brutal, so some might enjoy the harder edge there. This is not Bruce Le's best, but it's far from his worst.

The Dumb Ox (1974)

The Dumb Ox (1974)
Aka: Kung Fu Strongman; Return of the Panther
Chinese Title: 大鐵牛
Translation: Big Iron Bull

Starring: Kam Kong, Nancy Yen Nan-See, Lung Fei, Shan Mao, Addy Sung Gam-Loi, Ma Chi, Kwan Hung, Lei Jun, Tai Bo, Gam Ming, Wu Ma
Director: Wu Ma
Action Director: Leung Siu-Chung, Gam Ming (Tommy Lee)

Wu Ma as a director was a bit uneven in comparison to his colleagues like Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo-Ping, or his mentor, Chang Cheh. He worked a lot with Chang Cheh in the early 1970s, co-directing films like The Water Margin; All Men are Brothers; and The Pirate. Incidentally, The Pirate is generally considered to be one of the lesser Chang Cheh films during his Shaw Brothers tenure. But beyond that, Wu Ma’s solo career was very much hit-or-miss. For every Kick Boxer or Deaf Mute Heroine, there was a Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards. The best I can say that he was decent workman director: competent and reasonably entertaining most of the time, with the occasional moment of brilliance or dip into utter mediocrity.

The Dumb Ox is actually one of his better solo efforts, so far as I have seen. The film opens with a trio of men walking through the countryside with a whole lot of money they’ve accrued through their business dealings. One of them warns his friends about bandits, but the other says, “We’re from King Village, nobody dare mess with us.” Just then, a trio of masked men appear. One of the villagers is hung and the other two are beaten to death. The leader of the robbers, whom I’ll call ‘Boss’, reveals himself to be Addy Sung (The Four Robbers and Crystal Fist). He tells his two still-masked cohorts that he has some business in another city and tells them to hang tight.

Cut to King Village, where a stranger (Jimmy Wang Yu regular Lei Jun, of One-Armed Boxer and Beach of the War Gods) is harassing the local blacksmith. I’ll call him ‘Bounty Hunter,’ because it’s revealed that it is his occupation. The local Whore (Ting Hsiang, of Chiu Chow Kung Fu and The Legend of Mother Goddess) informs Bounty Hunter that the blacksmith is known as the Dumb Ox (Kam Kong, of A Girl Called Tigress and Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin) because he almost never talks. And he’s big and strong. Whore invites Bounty Hunter to her place for a good time, but he informs her that he’s broke and she loses interest.

Switch to the house of the town’s richest man, whom I’ll call “Dad” (Ma Chi, of The Brave and the Evil and The Killer Meteors). Dad has hired a duo of kung fu masters (Taiwanese regulars Lung Fei and Mao Shan) to teach his men kung fu. Dad’s son (Kwang Hung, another Jimmy Wang Yu regular) and daughter (Nancy Yen, of Ma Su Chen and The 7 Grand Masters) are also learning kung fu, of which the latter is the most promising. They all find out the aforementioned killings and start a patrol to keep an eye out for bandits. Bounty Hunter finds a metal contraption at the site of the murders and begins to suspect the Dumb Ox is involved.

We learn that the Dumb Ox was indeed once a bandit working under the Boss, although he was captured after killing a man during an escape and served time for his crime. It turns out that Bounty Hunter was present when the Dumb Ox was being paraded through the streets after his capture and now that crimes are happening in the area, the former suspects the latter is up to his old tricks. It doesn’t take much for him to convince the villagers, who are now in Angry Mob mode, to take their anger out on the Dumb Ox, too. The only person who doesn’t initially suspect him is Nancy, although enough coincidences occur that even she begins to wonder at some point.

Long story short, those other two masked killers are the two kung fu instructors, and they are not above trying to stoke up public sentiment against the Dumb Ox in order to hide their own crimes. The Bounty Hunter eventually relents and gives the Dumb Ox the benefit of the doubt, but when he finds out what’s really going on, he learns that his kung fu is just not good enough for the situation he finds himself in. So, the Dumb Ox is not going to have anyone to vouch for him when things get really violent…

The Dumb Ox is a sort of kung fu Les Misérables, with the Dumb Ox being our high-kicking Jean Valjean and the Bounty Hunter being the Javert equivalent. The film dwells a lot on how prejudiced people can be whenever dealing with someone with a criminal past, even though they themselves have gone straight and just want to be left alone. It takes very little for the villagers to get riled up against the Dumb Ox and once that happens, everything that happens around him serves to feed their Confirmation Bias. The villagers attack him, he fights back in self defense: he must be guilty. He pushes Son aside and an object falls on his leg and breaks it: he must have purposely maimed him. And so forth.

Eventually, the villains do overplay their hand and are forced to reveal themselves to the public. Even then, the Dumb Ox is forced into the moral quandary of “Do I help the people who have been treating me like crap for the past few weeks?” He eventually relents and does the right thing, leading into our climax. Nancy, who has waffled back and forth until now, joins him and puts her life on the line to stop the bad guys, although by the time the dust settles, the damage is done. The Dumb Ox can no longer live with the people he helped, even if he was the one who saved him. And sadly, the only person who is truly sad to see him go is the Whore, the closest thing he had to a friend.

I enjoyed the story, which is buoyed by some strong fight action courtesy of Leung Siu-Chung and Tommy Lee. Those two were collaborating on a lot of classic Bashers at the time, including Gold Snatchers; Black Panther; and The Two Cavaliers. They worked especially well with Polly Shang-Kuang Ling-Feng, staging the fights in her best bashers: A Girl Called Tigress; Seven to One; and Lady Whirlwind and the Rangers. They worked quite well together and we know that Tommy Lee (aka Gam Ming) would go on to be one of Taiwan’s best old school choreographers. Meanwhile, Leung Siu-Chung would never quite become one of the greats, but he did excellent work with Billy Chong in the latter part of his career.

The fights in this are very good by early 1970s basher standards. To be honest, this may be my favorite pure fighting performance by Kam Kong. Master of the Flying Guillotine may be his most iconic performance. And some of later villain roles like in Iron Monkey and The Crane Fighters required him to do more challenging shapes choreography. But this is the movie I’ve seen of his so far that really made the most of his training under Tan Tao-Liang. Unlike John Liu, who aped a lot of what Master Tan had taught him, Kam Kong doesn’t go for the flashy double/triple kicks or hop kicking. Instead, he just does the basics: side kicks, roundhouse kicks, etc. But he does them with altitude and power (his large frame helps sell the latter), which was often missing in basher movies. So, if you want to see what Kam Kong was all about, I suggest you watch this film (and Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin).

I don’t know if Nancy Yen was an actual martial artist, but if not, she fakes it quite well. She was the best thing in Ma Su Chen (of course, it was her movie) and she does good work here. Reliable veterans like Lung Fei, Shan Mao and Addy Sung also put in credible fighting performances. Shan Mao spends much of the latter part of the movie fighting with a sharpened iron circle hooked to a chain, which almost feels like a super-simplified flying guillotine. Addy Sung is presumably Opera trained, so his moves are a little flashier than those of his co-stars. Weapons are generally kept to the basics: poles and the odd spear or two. Standard basher procedure.

Between this and Wits to Wits (aka From China With Death), Wu Ma did well for himself in 1974. Too bad he could not always keep it up with this level of quality. But we all love him just the same.

Shamo (2007)

Shamo (2007) Chinese Title: 軍雞 Translation: Military(ized) Chicken

Starring: Shawn Yue, Annie Liu Xin-You, Francis Ng, Masato, Dylan Kuo Pin-Chao, Bruce Leung Siu-Lung, Ryo Ishibashi, Pei Pei Wei-Ying, Terri Kwan Wing, Hiromi Nakajima, Takuya Suzuki

Director: Soi Cheang

Action Director: Jack Wong Wai-Leung

Shamo is based on a Japanese manga of the same name, which tells the story of a young man who serves a term in a correctional facility for murdering his parents. While there, he learns karate from another one of the inmates, who is a karate master-cum-revolutionary. Once on the outside, he becomes a professional fighter of extremely questionable morals, often employing underhanded means (psychological warfare, blackmail, and even rape) in order to get the upper hand. In other words, the character of Shamo is a complete heel and a true antihero.

This live-action adaptation of the manga was brought to us by Soi Cheang, who is best known these days for martial arts films like SPL 2: A Time for Consequences and Walled In: Twilight of the Warriors. However, when this movie was made, Soi had previously made the ultra-bleak and ultra-violent crime thriller Dog Bite Dog, which is a hard film watch (let alone re-watch for the purpose of reviewing). Considering that film revolved around a professional assassin who was only marginally worse than the cops trailing him, making a movie about an unsavory character like Ryo Narushima seemed like a understandable idea.

The film opens with an idyllic family breakfast at the Narushima household. Ryo (Shawn Yue, of Dragon Tiger Gate and The Invisible Target) and his sister, Natsumi (Pei Pei, who played the mute love interest in Dog Bite Dog), are at the table enjoying a meal with their parents. The film cuts to Ryo being taken to prison as we learn that he has violently murdered his parents and confessed to the same. Ryo’s experience in prison is not a fun one: he regularly beaten, tortured, and raped by both the inmates and guards (led by the warden, played by War’s Ryo Ishibashi). He receives one visit from his sister, Natsumi, who announces that she has become a prostitute because of Japan’s culture of ostracizing anyone related to criminals, even if they themselves have done nothing wrong.

After one of his daily beatings, Ryo is about to slit his own throat on a broken toilet when he rescued by a new inmate, Kenji Kurokawa (Francis Ng, of The Mission and A Man Called Hero). Kurokawa is a karate master who was thrown in jail for murdering the Prime Minister—I’m surprised he didn’t get the death penalty for that—and is allowed by the Warden to teach karate to the inmates. Yeah, way to make hardened criminals even more dangerous. He sees potential in Ryo Narushima and teaches him, which makes Ryo strong enough to fight back against his tormentors.

Due to his being a minor, Ryo is let out after a two-year stint (unlike California, where violent offenders are often transferred to normal adult prisons after serving part of their sentence at the CYA). He dyes his hair blonde, becomes a gigolo (servicing overweight women), and is a general bully among the dregs of Japanese society. He meets a prostitute named Megumi (Annie Liu, of Invincible Dragon and The Great Grandmaster), whose nome de guerre is Natsumi. They become lovers after some initial conflict; Ryo has no problem beating women in this. A fight with some of the employees at Megumi’s hostess club spills over into a stadium where an MMA fight is being held. Ryo catches the attention of several of the big wigs from the Banryu Group, including group founder Kensuke Mochizuki (Bruce Leung, of Broken Oath and Four Shaolin Challengers) and split-off dojo leader Ryuichi Yamazaki (Dylan Kuo, of Skiptrace and Hyperspace Rescue).

Ryuichi tries to bring Ryo Narushima to his dojo to train in order to become a professional fighter in the Lethal Fight (LF) circuit—this film’s UFC equivalent. However, Ryuichi is challenged by Mochizuki and loses…and then is challenged by Ryo, and loses. His character more or less disappears from the film at this point, which makes me wonder what the point of the subplot is. Mochizuki tells Ryo that he can participate in the LF and to wait for a phone call. A fight is set up between Ryo and a Thai boxer, and he starts training. At this point, Kenji Kurokawa shows up—he got out of prison early, but the reason for that will be explained later—and starts training Ryo. Ryo wins his first professional match, winning only by a sliver when he whip-kick’s his opponent in the eye and blinds him. Mochizuki kicks Ryo out of the LF, but since Ryo is determined to fight the current champion, Naoto Sugawara (ISKA welterweight champion Masato), he resorts to underhanded means in order to get the fight scheduled…

Shamo is a Japanese/Hong Kong co-production. Most of the main cast members are from Hong Kong, as is the director and fight choreographer. Many of the people behind the camera are Japanese, as are most of the producers. The film is set in Japan (although parts were filmed in Thailand, hence a lot of Thai names in the smaller roles) and the characters are Japanese, although everybody speaks Cantonese in the movie. It is a weird mixture of cultures.

I have not read the Shamo manga, but gleaning over the synopsis at Wikipedia, it appears that this film covers the first two or three story arcs of the series. What is most noticeable in the story is how it feels like Soi Cheang actually diluted Ryo Narushima’s antiheroics in comparison with the source material. The original character was not above doing all sorts of awful, often criminal things in order to win. In this film, Ryo Narushima is a jerk, sometimes a woman-beating jerk, but he is not a complete monster. He threatens to rape Naoto Sugawara’s wife (or girlfriend), but never follows through with it, like he apparently does in the manga. Characters say that he is cruel, but he rarely comes across that way, except maybe when he’s fighting Ryuichi Yamazaki. Instead, he comes across as a bully whose bark is worse than his bite and often takes more than he dishes out. There are some other last-minute revelations that change the way we see his backstory.

Reviews point out how the dialog tries to be profound, but often comes across as weird and absurd. Case in point, while Ryo is training for his fight with the Thai boxer, Kenji shows him a reflection of the moon in a puddle and strikes it with a katana, telling him that if he can “split in the moon in half,” he’ll be ready for the fight. So, Ryo cuts himself and splatters a line of blood across the reflection of the moon, thus “splitting” it in half. Does this have anything to do with his training? No. Does it have anything to do with how he fights his opponent? No. So what was the entire point of the scene?

So what is the point of the movie? I’m not sure. It’s about a guy who studies karate in prison and goes on to become a professional kickboxer, but it’s not even really about the fights. Or at least Soi Cheang and choreographer Jack Wong don’t stage the fights to stand out from the rest of the movie. Jack Wong has spent most of his career working with other, more famous action directors, but in the past few years has gotten more acclaim for his individual choreography jobs, like Warriors of Future. The fights are all about karate and kickboxing and are staged fine, but the choreography is not particularly complex. There is also a bit of shaky cam and quick cuts in a lot of the fights, perhaps to create a comic book panel feel to the fights? There is one sequence where we see Ryo fighting some thugs inside a stadium. We see the footage of the professional fight clearly, while the other fight is depicted entirely with dueling shadows. Interesting from a visual standpoint, but choreography fans will be left wanting.

My main issue with the fighting is that Ryo is portrayed as the underdog for the entire movie. Even when his training has progressed, he often gets into group brawls with (supposedly) untrained people and gets beaten up despite being better than the people he’s fighting. The same goes for the professional fights: he gets done dirtier than Rocky in the ring, without the cathartic comeback at the end. Maybe director Soi Cheang wanted the fights to be subversive, much like Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives. It is weird to see this movie about a jerk training in karate and growing in his training, only to get his ass handed to him at almost every turn. But between the thuggishly unlikeable main character, questionable decisions in fight editing and direction, and an awful TV-movie score, I cannot really recommend Shamo to anyone.

The Big Boss Part 2 (1976)

The Big Boss Part 2 (1976) Chinese Title: 唐山弟子 Translation: Tangshan Disciples

Starring: Lo Lieh, Wang Ping, Preeva Prongernaug, Krung Srivilai, Michael Chan Wai-Man, Lee Kwan, Hung Wang, Bruce Le, Gam Biu, Ho Pak-Kwong

Director: Chan Chue

Action Director: Yuen Cheung-Yan

The Big Boss Part 2 for a long time was a lost movie. Or not necessarily lost, but pretty close. I believe there were a few copies in reel form floating around out there, some in the hands of African collectors—kung fu movies were huge business in Africa—and one that that some point found its way into Quentin Tarantino’s hands. A couple of collectors also had copies of the limited VHS of this, too. The Tarantino copy was shown at the New Beverly Cinema back around 2021, so a few fans lucky enough to live in Southern California were able to catch it. But for the rest of us, it wasn’t until Severin Films released their Game of Clones: Brucesploitation, Volume 1 box set in 2024 that it became available to the general populace—granted you got the limited collector’s edition directly from their website.

The movie picks up some time after the original film, with Cheng Chao’an (Bruce Le, of Bruce and Dragon Fist and Enter the Game of Death) rotting away in a small jail cell in Thailand after killing the titular Big Boss from the first film—the fight is partially recreated with new actors over the opening credits. An unspecified time later (this movie plays fast and loose with elapsed time), Cheng is visited by his younger brother, Cheng Chao-Jun (Lo Lieh, of Heroes of the Wild and Five Fingers of Death), who informs him that he’s there to avenge their father. This is a weird scene for two reasons: first of all, at no point in the original was an unjustly-murdered father ever mentioned. Second, the burned-on subtitles establish them as brothers, but then Chao-Jun starts talking about avenging his “father” and Chao’an’s “uncle,” so…they’re cousins?

Anyway, their conversation is overheard by another inmate (Ho Pak-Kwong, of Knockabout and The Magnificent Butcher) and his visitor (Gam Biu, of Cleopatra and the Casino of Gold). Those two men work for a Thai gang boss named Isabella (Preeva Prongernaug, of The Battle of Bang Rajan). Isabella is after a stash of gold belonging to another crime boss, who happens to be the Factor Manager from the first film (Chan Chue, the film’s director). This guy has gotten into the gold smuggling business and has accumulated some seven tons of the stuff, which Isabella wants. Her attempts to bring in outsiders to find it have come to naught, so when she learns that Cheng Chao-Jun is looking for vengeance against the same guy, she hires him to help her.

After an extended fight that starts at a casino and ends in a brothel, Cheng proves his mettle and starts the job. His job is to woo Wu (Wang Ping, of Vengeance! and Heroine Susan), the crime boss’s daughter. The two start seeing each other, but she never lets him visit her house because her dad’s a traditional guy, or so she says. At one point, the dad’s personal witch doctor (Lee Kwan, who played a different role in The Big Boss) tries to poison Cheng, but Wu saves him. Eventually, Isabella gets tired of waiting and has her second-in-command (big-time Thai actor Krung Srivilai, of H-Bomb and Tiger from River Kwai) kidnap Wu. They try to torture her into giving away the location of the gold, but Cheng saves her. 

All this results in a boat chase (set to Monty Norman’s theme for James Bond) and Cheng Chao-Jun wrestling with crocodiles, plus a gunfight between thugs from both gangs on different boats. Cheng learns that Wu’s dad is the same guy who killed his dad—Isabella had left out that detail when hiring him—and heads to the old ice factory to shore up accounts with him. Lots of kung fu ensues.

I know people say that a sign of a critic’s maturity is reviewing the film set before them and not the movie they wished they had seen. But watching this, I can’t help but think that it should have been something else. Not a completely different movie, but certainly a better movie in one of three respects. The Big Boss Part 2 should have either: a) cast a better martial artist in the lead; b) been more exploitative than it was; or c) been a lot weirder than it was.

Regarding item A, I like Lo Lieh as a martial arts actor, but as a martial arts actor, he is a bit limited. It doesn’t help that Yuen Cheung-Yan’s choreography—this guy went on to do The 7 Grand Masters and Charlie’s Angels—feels like it was elaborated in 1971 or early 1972. The fighting is pure “basher,” coming at a time when we had Shaolin shapes and Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee was starting to make his mark on cinema. Lo Lieh does his best, but his low kicks and nondescript handwork just don’t cut the mustard for 1976. It would have been better if Bruce Liang or Tan Tao-Liang had been cast in the lead role. Hell, if Bruce Le had been cast as Bruce Lee’s brother/cousin, it might have been an improvement.

Regarding item B, The Big Boss was pure exploitation, from the frequent bloody violence to the nudity from Thai actress Malalin Bonnak. This movie has some nudity in the first act: when the casino fight goes upstairs to the brothel, the combatants knock down a door and reveal a naked woman having sex with a man (we briefly see her breasts and buttocks). We get some more brief nudity when the prostitutes and their Johns start fleeing their rooms. And after that fight, Lo Lieh’s character is inexplicably seduced by Isabella, leading to a steamy sex scene. The camera placement is a bit odd, in that it just barely cuts off her bare breasts. If you’re going to tease it that extent, just go and show it. The violence in this film is also extremely tame, which is disappointing. The film alludes to one cool death at the very end, but we don’t see much. If the film were a bit more tonally consistent with the original in terms of blood and boobs, that might have helped a bit more.

Then there’s item C. Jimmy Wang Yu knew the value of out-weirding the competition when you couldn’t out-fight them. Compare the sequels to The Chinese Boxer and One-Armed Boxer to the originals, which were made when the bar was still relatively low for onscreen kung fu. The sequels were absolutely nuts, on the other hand. This film introduces a black magic wizard subplot, but needed that extra push to make it memorable. This came out a year after the Shaw Brothers horror classic Black Magic, which I understand had all sorts of nutty magical procedures. So, there was a template for that to follow This movie could have made more of that and would have found a way to set itself apart from both the original and all the other Brucesploitation films of the period. 

But as it lacks a strong exploitation, kung fu, or strange element, it makes all the problems in the story all the more glaring. I mentioned the bit about the dialog that makes it confusing whether or not the Chengs are brothers or cousins. At the end, we learn from Chao Chao-Jun that Wang Ping’s Wu is actually the daughter of the guy Cheng Chao’an killed…so is she the daughter of Han Ying-Chieh’s character. So, how many years after The Big Boss is this film set? Perhaps around 20? So Bruce Le has been lying around in the small cell for 20 years? They couldn’t transfer him to a prison that might at least have a prison yard to move around in? Moreover, how did Cheng Chao-Jun know the truth about Wu and her parentage? Nothing in the film established that he knew about it in the first place. 

I am glad that this movie is no longer lost. “Losing” movies is a terrible thing to happen to the art form. So, I’m glad that people like me can watch this. But other than the film’s curiosity value to one of the most influential martial arts films of all time, there is not a whole lot to recommend this. You would be better served re-watching The Big Boss, or if you need a Lo Lieh hit, Five Fingers of Death. Heck, Bruce Le’s maiden Brucesploitation voyage, Bruce’s Deadly Fingers, is miles ahead of this. And that also came out in 1976.