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.