FTC Forum
ENGLISH => GENERAL => Topic started by: MysteRy on August 28, 2014, 02:10:27 PM
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20 Great Hong Kong Cult Films That Are Worth Watching
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The Hong Kong film industry is responsible for some of the most influential films and filmmakers of the last 50 years. It’s an industry most renowned for the epic level of martial arts cinema that captured the world’s imagination back in the 70s and 80s, but it’s also been a source of great films in other genres such as gangster films, horror, science fiction and comedy.
What seems to set a Hong Kong film apart from cinema in other parts of the world is the attitude of never letting the audience have a chance to get bored, always striving for greater heights of extreme onscreen action and outrageousness.
This list of Hong Kong classics is going to focus on a specific brand of Hong Kong output: the cult films that have been the biggest reason for Chinese cinema’s status among movie buffs. For obvious reasons, many of the entries emphasize the martial arts genre, but you’ll see nods to crime thrillers, kaiju, comedy of the 90s.
Like many film industries, many of the same actors and directors turn up again and again, and so you’ll see multiple appearances by Chow-Yun Fat, Simon Yam, Anthony Wong, Wong Jing, and Chang Cheh, not to mention more than one film produced by the mighty Shaw Brothers studios.
No matter what one feels about many of the films discussed here, there can be no doubt that they have all, in their way, had a significant impact on cinema history.
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20. The Mighty Peking Man aka Goliathon
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The Story:
A team of researchers from Hong Kong University set off for the Himalayas in search of a legendary giant gorilla. On the way they encounter vicious tigers and venomous snakes, and when one of their number goes missing (Danny Lee in an early role) after being captured by the massive ape, they give him up for lost.
Alone, Lee meets a beautiful female Tarzan (Evelyne Kraft), with whom he falls in love. He returns to his companions with the gorilla and his new romantic interest, after which they’re all taken to Hong Kong, where the head of the expedition plans to put the gorilla on display for profit. After enduring torments at the hands of his captors, he escapes, causing destruction and mayhem throughout the city while his human friends try to keep the military from killing him.
Why You Should See It:
Produced exclusively to cash in on the release of the 1976 Dino de Laurentiis remake of King Kong, Mighty Peking Man manages to out-perform that film in some key ways. Unlike the remake, the action gets going right away, showing the monster attacking a small village in a flashback.
The filmmakers have no interest in coyly hiding their creature until later in the run time or engaging in time-wasting story development; the approach here is to pull the audience in from the beginning, and they succeed handily.
Slammed by critics at the time as a cheap rip-off, the movie thrills in ways that can’t be denied by anyone who takes the time to watch it.
The Motown-style soundtrack is priceless, there is some surprising gore that comes at the end of a fight scene between a stuntman and what appears to be an actual tiger, and the gorilla’s rampage in the last twenty minutes is as colorful, explosive, and minutely detailed as anything produced by Toho Studios in its many giant monster features.
Roger Ebert even retracted his original negative review of the movie after viewing it again years later. It’s also noteworthy for being one of the films released by Quentin Tarantino’s now-defunct Rolling Thunder video distribution company back in the late 90s.
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19. Naked Killer
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The Story:
Simon Yam plays a cop with serious firearms issues (after accidentally shooting his own brother, he throws up at the sight of guns) pursuing a killer who gives special nasty attention to a certain part of the male anatomy. After witnessing a woman named Kitty (Chingmy Yau) repeatedly stab a man, he thinks he’s found a suspect, but ends up letting her go.
During an incredible gymnastic gun battle in a parking garage, she runs into Sister Cindy, an assassin who targets dastardly men—she even keeps several chained up in her basement for practice. The two become a team, but then run afoul of another killer with ties to Sister Cindy.
Why You Should See It:
Infamous parodist/schlockmeister Wong Jing wrote and produced this film, essentially a spoof of Basic Instinct with all of the prurient elements turned up by a factor of 10. Unlike Paul Verhoeven’s randy classic, it isn’t shy about putting the more salacious (and attention grabbing) aspects of the film’s romantic relationships front and center. As this is a Hong Kong film made in the 90s, there’s also a smattering of airborne kung fu action and unrestrained gunfire.
There are many wicked and bloody moments, but none of it comes off as terribly offensive or cringe-inducing, and overall everything seems amazingly tasteful for a movie that features frequent risqué scenes and off-color humor.
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18. Infra-Man
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The Story:
A newly-minted cyborg superhero (Danny Lee) does battle with the ancient Princess Dragon Mom and her prehistoric monster minions, which include but are not limited to an octopus man and a pair of metallic warriors with spiked balls for hands, as they try to take over the Earth.
Why You Should See It:
Colorful sci-fi pop art delirium as seen through a filter of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Shaw Brothers takes a cue from the Ultraman TV series, fractures the particulars into a kaleidoscopic tornado of monster karate and lasers, and hurls it at the viewer with a liberal dose of explosions, kaiju action, and motorcycles.
Detractors might say that this is nothing more than Power Rangers with Mario Bava lighting and ADHD, overlooking the fact that Shaw Brothers did it decades earlier, with an exuberant sense of fun and inventiveness missing from similar entertainment. Never mind the cheesy costumes and comical story—this is all about fun, and it’s there in goofy, unselfconscious spades, like the best Saturday morning cartoon ever produced.
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17. The Eternal Evil Of Asia
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The Story:
A group of young men vacationing in Thailand get on the bad side of a local wizard when they accidentally kill his sister. He follows them back to Hong Kong, employing a voodoo doll and other dark spells to enact his revenge. Worst of all, he promises to ravish and kill the wife of the one man who had least offended him. Luckily, his wife has made friends with a young Thai witch living in the city, who tries her best to prevent the remaining victims from the wizard’s vengeance.
Why You Should See It:
People watch cult films from Hong Kong for certain reasons, good taste not being chief among them. With that in mind, this horror/comedy presents for curious viewers images that they will probably not find anywhere else.
A man’s head is turned into a giant penis with his face on it. A sorcerer couple—shall we say commingle?—in mid-air while blasting their rival with explosive energy bolts. A man goes into a cannibalistic frenzy in a busy restaurant, and out of desperation chews his own arm down to the bone.
Star Ellen Chan is violated by a phantom presense while swinging from a chandelier. All of which walks the line between extremely questionable taste and brilliant audacity, and that is, essentially, what sets most Asian film industries apart from Hollywood—the ability to entertain ideas that would never make it to the screen in the West. The Eternal Evil Of Asia represents that freedom as fully—and, truth be told, as engagingly—as any other film out of Hong Kong in the 90s.
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16. Way Of The Dragon aka Return Of The Dragon
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The Story:
Bruce Lee plays a young man who travels from Hong Kong to Rome to visit his uncle and cousin and help them out with some trouble they’re having with the mafia, who want them to sell their restaurant. The local mob boss repeatedly tries to intimidate and kill Lee, to absolutely no effect, and eventually resorts to hiring martial arts experts to take him out (one of whom is played by Chuck Norris).
Why You Should See It:
The only one of Lee’s film written, produced, and directed by Lee himself (Game Of Death doesn’t technically count because he died before it could be completed), Way Of The Dragon showcases Lee at his very best, and demonstrates as well as any of his films why he became the James Dean of the martial arts world.
He proves himself to be a competent director, shooting comedic and action scenes alike with enough flair to make one wonder what he could have accomplished had he lived to produce more works. Certain moments also seem to reflect Lee’s own philosophy about life, and impatience with tradition in the face of new ideas—his character at one point remarks that he would tear down some of the old architectural relics of Rome and put up high rises if he had his way.
It was often said that Lee had to slow himself down in order to be caught on film, and Way Of The Dragon is a testament to that. Often he moves so quickly as to seem only a blur.
The film’s two key action sequences—a fight in an alley in which he incorporates a staff and nunchucks, and his final fight with Chuck Norris’ character—are better shot than even the best scenes in Enter The Dragon, and Lee comes off as at least the equal of Lo Wei, who directed him in The Big Boss and Fist Of Fury.
Although it’s not without blemishes (the depiction of a black man and gay man are not especially open-minded or flattering), it’s good enough to make anyone wonder what Lee might have done given more time.
(One side note: the English dub can be a little confusing. Because every character is dubbed speaking the same language, it’s not always clear that Lee isn’t supposed to understand what some people are saying to him because he doesn’t speak Italian, and needs his cousin to translate for him. This is too bad, because some of the comedy loses its timing.)
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15. Five Deadly Vemons
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The Story:
A martial arts master has trained five students in different styles of kung fu: Centipede, Scorpion, Lizard, Snake and Toad. The students do not know one another’s identities, and each has gone his own way. Fearing that one of them might be plotting to steal the martial arts clan’s fortune, he sends a sixth student, trained in elements of all five styles, to try to team up with one of the others and stop the offending party.
Why You Should See It:
One of director Chang Cheh’s best known films, the cult status of which cannot be underestimated. References to it come up in film, music and television all the time, and it wound up making stars of the six main actors (Kuo Chi, Lu Feng, Chiang Sheng, Sun Chien, Lo Mang and Wei Pai) who came to be known by fans as the Venom Mob.
This is a movie that came from a time when Shaw Brothers output didn’t look as fine-tuned as their films from the previous decade—production schedules likely became tighter as the demand for more releases grew.
Weighed against other Chang Cheh films from around the same time, Five Deadly Venoms actually isn’t the strongest—there are fewer fight scenes and less urgent pacing than in, say, Five Element Ninjas or Crippled Avengers—but it nonetheless gained notoriety mostly on the strength of its uniquely oddball central concept. (One character, the master of Lizard kung fu, along with being a capable fighter, also has the ability to walk on walls.)
It’s also more cruelly violent than many kung fu films, which is really saying something (the protracted torture scenes of the Toad, while not terribly hard to watch, are still nasty.)
Worth noting as well is one of the most memorable openings of any old-school martial arts movie, in which each individual master, clad in black and wearing a mask symbolizing the animal his style is based on, runs through a furious demonstration of his abilities, destroying tableware and other breakables in mesmerizing slow motion.
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14. Dr. Lamb
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The Story:
An accused killer (Simon Yam) is brought in by the police, along with members of his family, after being caught with photographs of a recently deceased woman. The killer refuses to give up any information, even after being violently interrogated, and it is only when his family is apprised of the nature of his crimes that he finally comes clean. As police listen, he describes the homicides, and things only get worse as investigators uncover more of the physical evidence.
Why You Should See It:
Based on the real life 1982 case of Hong Kong serial killer Lam Kor-wan, known as The Jars Murderer and The Rainy Night Murderer in the local press, Dr. Lamb sticks fairly close to many of the details of what took place: the killer often photographed or filmed his female victims postmortem, and went so far as to preserve some of their body parts in jars.
As one can imagine, any film adaptation is going to be incredibly lurid, but Dr. Lamb (directed by co-star Danny Lee and Billy Tang) does a good job of not taking things too far overboard given the content, and although it isn’t without its sensationalistic and exploitive scenes, it’s not as gory or disgusting as it might be.
The story is told in two parts: the first half depicts the killer’s arrest and interrogation, and the second delves into the details of some of the murders in flashbacks. Yam’s performance reflects this shift in subject matter, starting out reticent and inexpressive and moving gradually further into howling madness and depravity. Stylishly directed and excellently paced, the film takes its material seriously, with only occasional touches of gallows humor.
There is an unmistakable Taxi Driver influence as well, as Yam drives his cab in the rain, awash in colorful neon light and jazz music similar to Bernard Herrman’s score from Scorsese’s film, searching for new victims. Helpfully for the audience, the presence of the detectives throughout provides a human, moral grounding as the killer’s tale unwinds, keeping the tone from getting oppressively dark. Highly recommended for fans of Seven and Silence of the Lambs.
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13. Diary Of A Serial Killer
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The Story:
Lau Shu Bill (Chan Kwok-Bong) sits in jail regaling his cellmates with the details of his exploits: he is a notorious serial killer convicted of murdering 14 prostitutes. He seems driven by the belief that if he kills these women, he’ll be freeing them from an immorality and allowing them, through the suffering that he inflicts, to be reincarnated into a better life.
But even as he sinks further into deranged homicidal madness, a distant relative of his wife’s gives him a new focus, a strange sense of forgiveness for himself despite his horrible crimes, even as he awaits execution.
Why You Should See It:
It might seem odd that I’m including Diary Of A Serial Killer in such close proximity to Dr. Lamb, but I think that watching both films provides an opportunity to see two very different interpretations of the same notorious murder case that shocked the public back in the early 80s.
The influences here lean heavily toward Hitchcock, very obviously in a part that mimics the shower scene from Psycho, and a little less so in scenes that appear to be inspired by Frenzy. The tone also reflects Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer in some respects, most notably in the way the killer befriends a troubled young woman for whom he has conflicted feelings, with other elements taken from the 1980 slasher film Maniac (Lau Shu Bill applies pieces of his victims’ skin to a mannequin he keeps in his bedroom.)
It’s definitely more of an exploitation film than Dr. Lamb, mixing much more humor with the (somewhat less) gory killings, but it can’t be said to be without its merits. It moves along quickly—reflecting the overall HK film industry sentiment of never letting an audience get bored—and while it revels in the typical trait of HK cult films of the time, what happens onscreen is just a hair too campy to be taken entirely seriously.
And as B-grade as some of the proceedings are, there is enough character development to engender feelings of sympathy or pity for the protagonist, even as he goes about the business of being a serial killer. There’s even a bit at the end that hints at Bill’s own desire to be freed from the torment of what he is—his own karmic second chance, if not forgiveness.
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12. The Untold Story
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The Story:
Anthony Wong, in a performance that won him the best actor Hong Kong Film Award, portrays a violent, deranged loser who flees the police in Hong Kong to Macau, and begins working in the Eight Immortals restaurant owned by the family he lives with. He murders them and assumes ownership of the establishment, explaining to anyone who asks that they sold him the place and moved away.
The full story behind what took place is far more gruesome, as local police eventually discover, and as the investigation proceeds, the shockingly horrifying truth of what went on during and after the killings comes to light.
Why You Should See It:
Movie about serial killers appear to have been popular around the early-to-mid 90s in Hong Kong, and this one does not disappoint. Untold Story explores the full spectrum of what can be gotten away with in a cult thriller, and unlike similar films on this list, there are scenes that are undeniably hard to watch, particularly the brutal rape/murder of a waitress hired by Wong after he takes over the business.
What it does have in common with some other cult crime films discussed here is a tendency on that part of the filmmakers to soften the blow of the subject with odd comedic choices, in this case to intersperse broad, almost slapstick comedy with flashbacks of ghastly killings.
As in Dr. Lamb, Danny Lee plays one of the detectives. Also like that film, the script is apparently based on a true story. The story structure is similar, as well, indicating that there was a type of convention being respected among these films that was expected by the audience, or at the very least considered by the producers to be a winning formula for success.
Anthony Wong gives a riveting and disturbing performance as the killer (he’s generally quite good at portraying villains). For those with a strong stomach and a love of the macabre, this is an interesting film to check out.
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11. Fong Sai Yuk aka The Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk
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The Story:
Kung Fu expert Fong Sai Yuk (Jet Li) falls for the lovely Ting Ting during an athletic tournament, but her father Tiger Lui has other plans: he stages a kung fu competition in which anyone who can beat his wife in a fight will win his daughter’s hand in marriage.
Fong loses (pretty much on purpose, not knowing Ting Ting is the prize), but his mother steps in—dressed as a man and posing as his brother—to win, and inadvertently causes Tiger Lui’s wife to fall in love with her. Further complicating matters is the fact that a Ching Dynasty governor is seeking out a list of names that will reveal the identities of the members of the rebellious Red Flower Society, one of whom just happens to be Fong Sai Yuk’s father.
Why You Should See It:
What set Hong Kong martial arts films of the 90s apart from what had come before was the incorporation of tightly edited action sequences utilizing shots that are numerous, quick and varied, and intensive wire work. Director Corey Yuen makes full use of the style in Fong Sai Yuk, running star and executive producer Li through a demanding regimen of jumps, flips, kicks, pole fights and flying in the lead role.
The humor can be a bit hit or miss, though it hits more often than not, and the dazzling action keeps things going at a good pace. Listen for the gag at the end referencing God Of Gamblers.
Those who haven’t seen many of Jet Li’s older films and are interested in his filmography should really stick to the work he did during this period in Hong Kong; even the best of his Western-produced films pale in comparison to the likes of the first three Once Upon A Time In China installments, Swordsman 2, Fist Of Legend, High Risk, Tai Chi Master, and this film and its sequel. It wasn’t until he went back to making movies in China and starred in stuff such as Hero, Fearless and The Warlords that he started producing worthwhile films again.
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10. One Armed Swordsman
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The Story:
An orphaned boy (played as an adult by Jimmy Wang Yu) is put under the care of a master swordsman, whose other students grow jealous of his superior fighting skills and resentful that someone from such a humble background should be studying alongside them. He decides to leave, but a woodland confrontation with two other students and the master’s daughter leads to him losing an arm.
A farmgirl and her father find him and nurse him back to health, and with the help of an old, partially destroyed martial arts manual, he learns how to fight again with only his left arm. Just in time, too: his master is being stalked by a former rival, who has developed a technique that can defeat the old swordsman’s style, and is using it to kill all of his students.
Why You Should See It:
The grim bloodiness that came to be standard fare at Shaw Brothers in the 70s is generally thought to have had its start here, in the film that made a star of Jimmy Wang Yu and launched one of the most iconic characters in martial arts films.
One Armed Swordsman was followed at least three sequels (depending on how you’re counting—he made guest appearances as well in other films), not all of which starred Wang Yu, though he did take the idea and create the One Armed Boxer, just to keep the momentum going.
In the Five Deadly Venoms entry I mentioned how later Shaw Brothers movies are rougher around the edges than their films from the 60s and early 70s; One Armed Swordsman is a perfect example of that difference. Though it’s shot mostly on indoor sets like the later films, it’s lit and staged far more convincingly, with sunsets and snow-covered forests evocative of a mythical fantasy world informed by actual Chinese history and locations; even the painted backdrops of mountains give a subtle impression of a larger landscape beyond.
Director Chang Cheh also shows a stronger sense of story subtext here, with Wang Yu’s character inheriting a broken sword the foreshadows the subsequent loss of a limb, and later going head-to-head with a villain called Long-Armed Devil, an ironic counterpoint to how one might describe Wang Yu’s condition.
What’s interesting is that the more Wang Yu loses in the film, the stronger he becomes, while his adversaries, in an attempt to augment their strength with gadgets and trickery, eventually fail. A good, character-driven story with some terrific action.
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9. God Of Gamblers
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The Story:
A world-famous gambler (Chow Yun-Fat), while helping a client to win an illegal gambling competition, suffers a concussion that reduces him to a childlike mentality, but doesn’t take away his gambling instincts.
Andy Lau plays a small-time con man who discovers him and tries to use his abilities to win big in different gambling establishments, but the situation is complicated when Chow’s former partner plots against him, and a gangster starts putting pressure on Lau and his friends to repay a debt. The only hope is for Chow to regain his memory and take part in a high stakes card game that will determine everyone’s fate.
Why You Should See It:
Wong Jing, a filmmaker better known for using extreme crowd-pleasing tactics in his movies restrains himself admirably with God Of Gamblers, a film that is a little bit James Bond and a little bit Rain Man, with touches of Woo-esque heroic bloodshed and martial arts stunt work just to keep it all interesting. Action fans accustomed to seeing Chow Yun-Fat in serious action roles might be pleased to see him putting in a comedic turn here, opening the door for some good slapstick.
The film looks terrific, and while the run time is slightly over two hours (somewhat long compared to many motion pictures from Hong Kong), the length is barely noticeable. Action scenes, while not wall-to-wall, are effective and exciting—a chase across two sections of bamboo scaffolding is especially memorable.
The best part is that it isn’t necessary to know very much about gambling to enjoy the story, because pretty much every victory is won through elaborate cheating, and the gambling scenes are handled with a combination of camera work similar to Scorsese’s The Color Of Money and solid acting. Followed by four sequels.
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8. Eight Diagram Pole Fighter aka Invincible Pole Fighter
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The Story:
A Song Dynasty general is betrayed by a traitor within his ranks, resulting in his death in battle and that of all but two of his sons. Of those two, one returns home, driven to the brink of insanity by the tragedy. The other flees to a Shaolin temple, where he begs to be allowed to become a monk, though the abbot has serious misgivings about counting such an intense and vengeance-driven man among their number.
While he tries to adjust to the monks’ non-violent ways, he works on a unique style of pole fighting adapted from his own martial arts training. When he hears that his sister has been captured by enemy forces, he leaves to rescue her, even though doing so might damn him as both a monk and as a man.
Why You Should See It:
Lau Kar-leung, who also directed classics such as The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin and Legendary Weapons Of China, once again proves why he was one of the strongest directors to work at Shaw Brothers. It differs from some of his other films in that the tone is unrelentingly downbeat, owing perhaps to the fact that popular co-star Alexander Fu Sheng died in a car wreck during filming.
Gordon Liu gives a powerful performance as a wronged warrior torn by a competing desire for revenge for the sake of his family and the detachment he needs to begin the process of healing. He is a man who has become displaced in the world, bereft of his family and too overwhelmed by violent urges to live in the society of monks.
Lau is no stranger to staging great action scenes—being himself a martial artist and veteran fight choreographer—and he doesn’t disappoint with Pole Fighter’s legendary, high-flying finale, wherein we see that Liu’s character, however much he has tried to internalize the temple’s Buddhist teachings, is sadly doomed to be a man traumatized by death and revenge.
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7. Running On Karma
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The Story:
A former Shaolin monk-turned-male-stripper (Andy Lau), who sees visions of karma around people he meets, gets involved in a murder investigation concerning two martial arts-trained yogis. His visions help provide clues to the killer’s location, but as he develops a personal relationship with a female detective on the case, he is reminded more and more of an unsolved murder from his past that caused him to renounce the spiritual life.
As he and the young woman come to realize that their destinies are fixed, they both eventually head back to the mountains where Lau lived as a monk, in search of a killer still at large.
Why You Should See It:
Johnnie To, sort of an heir apparent to the action throne vacated by John Woo, has crafted a very unusual specimen for the Hong Kong cinema archives: an art house kung fu police procedural that is as much a contemporary urban fantasy as it is a crime drama.
Lau, wearing a full-body prosthetic muscle man suit, plays a man trying to escape from the past who knows full well, as a result of the karmic visions that drove him from being a monk, that the past is always a part of life, and that each new action leads to events that will affect a much larger future than anyone can see.
This is a very Buddhist film, and seems to have been intended as a visual essay on the nature of karma itself, on private and public responsibility, and on the means to finding peace in a violent and chaotic world.
The film’s philosophic ambitions in no way hinder its entertainment value; this is a fun, intriguing, and fanciful motion picture, populated by odd characters, and full of action and humor. Despite occasional graphic violence and dark tone the film takes on in the last act, the ending is basically optimistic about human nature and the moral implications of living a life mindful of long-term consequences.
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6. The Prodigal Son
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The Story:
A young nobleman (Yuen Biao) believes himself to be an expert at kung fu, when in fact his father pays local toughs to lose fights to him. After an altercation with a traveling opera company (in one part of which Yuen shows off some of his own real-life vocal training) one of the players—a male performer of female roles who is a wing chun expert—let’s him know that his kung fu is terrible and that he’s being lied to.
Yuen vows to learn wing chun from this man, following and harassing him for months until a tragedy forces them to seek the help of the actor’s brother, another kung fu master played by Sammo Hung. Yuen learns to fight from both of them, and takes on the wing chun master’s enemy in a brutal final showdown.
Why You Should See It:
Years before what came to be considered the new wave of Hong Kong film making, director and fight choreographer Sammo Hung was blazing a new trail in film technique for Hong Kong cinema—or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, he was returning to the more technically competent and visually lavish style of Shaw Brothers studios in the 1960s.
People accustomed to Hong Kong fight films with corny or strained humor are encouraged to seek this movie out. Many of the slapstick and sight gags Hung creates really hit the mark, and they mix well with a martial arts storyline of revenge and redemption.
As with much of Hung’s earlier films the fight scenes are performed with speed, agility and grace, displaying an intricate visual density that pushes the standard of martial arts choreography at the time to the next level. Yuen Biao, who for a long time frequently collaborated with Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan before the professional relationship between those two men dissolved, is outstanding in the lead role.
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5. Full Contact
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The Story:
Chow Yun-Fat plays a man in Thailand whose brother (Anthony Wong) owes money to a lone shark. In order to raise funds, they team up with a strange trio of robbers (lead by Simon Yam, who excels at playing dangerous characters) who wind up double crossing them, leaving Chow for dead (and costing him a couple of fingers).
After training up and learning to shoot with his left hand, Chow goes back for revenge, though his adversaries appear to have the advantage. Only with the help of his brother and girlfriend, as well as a trusty butterfly knife, can Chow hope to succeed.
Why You Should See It:
It’s safe to say that Ringo Lam’s Full Contact could go toe-to-toe with any American crime film produced around this time. It’s stylish and witty, brutal and peppered with some of the best action sequences of any Hong Kong gangster movie. Chow is shown here at his coolest, in a role that is a bit of a departure from his “trenchcoat killer” parts in similar films.
Critics drew comparisons to the work of John Woo (sometimes with good reason), but Lam’s characters are pushed by much different motivations. Absent is the standard Woo-type bromance, male characters bonding over bloodshed and betrayal—a vengeful Chow grimly goes about the business of seeking retribution against a cold-blooded, sadistic antagonist. Yet as violent and intense as the proceedings sometimes get, there is still a strain of humanity lurking just below the veneer of blood and bullets.
Lam is less sentimental than Woo, and has a better sense of humor, which makes him in some ways a more effective director. He’s also much more honest about the homoerotic overtones of the male relationships in these types of films (Yam’s character is quite clearly bisexual or gay). Populated by people who wouldn’t be out of place in a Tarantino or Coen brothers movie, Full Contact is sophisticated in its execution and looks fantastic, with a story that never fails to keep the viewer interested.
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4. Ip Man
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The Story:
Donnie Yen plays legendary Wing Chun kung fu master Ip Man, most famous for having once been a martial arts instructor to Bruce Lee. Ip lives in the city of Fushon in the 1930s, practicing his art and existing generally unconcerned with the martial world outside his palatial home, apart from the occasional friendly one-on-one sparring match.
When the Japanese army invades, enslaving and brutalizing many of the city’s inhabitants, including Ip Man himself, he finds he must put his many years of training to a more practical use. He proves his skill to a Japanese general—who is also a martial arts expert—and finds himself challenged to a deadly match against him to preserve the honor of southern Chinese kung fu.
Why You Should See It:
In recent years, movie budgets and technical proficiency have risen to such a level in Chinese cinema that often studios are putting out product that is indisputably world class in quality, as expertly shot and polished as anything put out by big studios in the US.
Any American film fans out there who’ve ever wondered why more foreign titles don’t play in mainstream theaters, a movie like Ip Man probably provides as good an answer as any—films of this caliber would consistently out-perform American-made films in the multiplexes.
Directed by Wilson Yip and starring the inimitable Donnie Yen, whose star has been gradually rising in Hong Kong cinema for decades, Ip Man demonstrates how far fight choreography and performance have come in kung fu cinema. It isn’t fair to call Sammo Hung’s action direction mind-boggling—it’s positively transcendent, so knotted and intricate at times that it’s difficult to track everything that’s happening.
Yen is subdued and charismatic, making Ip a very easy character to root for. A simplistically patriotic mentality to the story is probably the film’s one and only real drawback, but it certainly doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the fine film making on display. This beat Wong Kar-wai’s own Ip Man biopic The Grandmaster to the screen by a few years; legal action was taken over the title, which was originally going to be Grandmaster Ip Man. Followed by Ip Man 2 a couple of years later, with a third film reportedly now in production.
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3. The Longest Nite
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The Story:
A corrupt cop in Macau (Tony Leung) is given a task by a local mob boss to prevent a hit from being carried out on a rival boss in order to keep the peace between the two gangs. As he struggles to keep things in order, a strange bald man (Lau Ching-Wan) arrives in town, with an agenda Leung can’t quite fathom. As events build to a head, the situation grows more violent, heading toward a fateful and dark finale.
Why You Should See It:
For those who like their crime thrillers downbeat and brutal, The Longest Nite is a good bet. Everyone in the story is corrupt or a criminal, everyone is trying to get over on someone else, there is no trust, no stability, and ultimately, no hope. Yet the film, directed by Patrick Yau and co-produced by Johnnie To, is terrifically entertaining, gripping, and tense, punctuated by some standout scenes (Lau, as the bald hitman, has a great bit where he escapes from a moving car).
The cinematography is outstanding, lending the the story a somewhat glitzy, somewhat sleazy noir atmosphere that underscores the vicious motives of the characters, accompanied by a great score.
Interesting too is how the film handles the idea of the loss of identity: Leung’s cop, framed for taking out the contract on a major boss, goes adrift in his own world, becoming neither a cop nor a criminal, and at the end desperately tries to take on some of the persona of his bald counterpart. A brooding and uncompromising film, with style to spare.
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2. A Chinese Ghost Story
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The Story:
A down-on-his-luck tax collector (Leslie Cheung) spends the night in an abandoned temple, where he first sees a Taoist monk and a brigand do battle, then encounters the spirit of a mysterious young woman. He nearly falls prey to reanimated corpses (which he fails to notice), and on his second meeting with the young woman, finds out that she is not only a ghost, but is enthralled to an evil forest god she is fated to marry.
With the help of the Taoist monk’s magic, he attempts to free her from her servitude, and in doing so allow her to be reincarnated, before the wedding to the terrible demon takes place.
Why You Should See It:
Producer Tsui Hark is generally regarded as the man responsible for kicking off a new wave in Hong Kong cinema by introducing Hollywood-style special effects and shooting techniques. All of the expertise that made him an international success are fully on display in A Chinese Ghost Story: the camera work is fluid, the editing tight and intricate, and all of the action is beautifully staged, accompanied by impressive visual effects (for the 80s).
Zombies shamble in stop motion and magical energy flies like Star Wars laser blasts, while at the center is a romantic story that is both sweet and engaging.
A charming, light tone maintains along the way—even during some effective horror set pieces—set in an enchanted world of haunted forests and mystic powers. It stands as a testament to the directing skill of Ching Sin-tung, who also directed the incredible Duel To The Death in 1982, and went on to direct both sequels to this film for Tsui Hark as well as the Swordsman trilogy.
The humor works very well, buoyed by a compelling performance by Cheung, as well as those of Joey Wong as the unfortunate ghost and Wu Ma as the magical monk. Horror fans will enjoy the visual references to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and John Carpenter’s The Thing, while everyone else will be carried along by the runaway pace and breezy storytelling.
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1. The Killer
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The Story:
A hitman (Chow Yun-Fat) accidentally blinds a woman in the course of a job, and takes it upon himself to raise the money for surgery that will restore her sight. At the end of another job he’s double crossed, betrayed by a close friend and pursued by a determined cop (Danny Lee) who wants to bring Chow to justice. Multiple gunfights ensue as the killer and his girlfriend go one the run to escape.
Why You Should See It:
I had originally meant to pair this entry with John Woo’s Hardboiled, but between the two films I feel that this one best represents everything that makes a Woo film great: grand operatic drama, intense relationships among the male protagonists (who are often on opposite sides of the law, or opposing factions of the same side), and deadly hurricanes of bullets.
Most people remember the first time they saw this movie—I watched a rented copy twice in a row myself. It’s Woo’s Sistine Chapel or 9th Symphony, a masterpiece of nearly otherworldly action and violence that goes so far beyond what is typically expected of a crime film that it almost becomes the progenitor of new genre. That’s pretty much what happened, when one takes into account the enormous impact Woo’s films have had on Hollywood (helped in part by the fact Woo made movies there himself for a while).
It could be fairly argued that Woo never again returned to the heights he reached with The Killer, employing styles culled from kung fu films, Peckinpah bloodbaths like The Wild Bunch, and American action blockbusters. Apart from maybe Robocop or The Road Warrior (two movies this one has been compared to), it may be the closest thing to a perfect action film out there.
Author Bio: Scot Mason lives in Tucson, AZ. He is the author of the blogs Hawaii Timewarp, Eastern Trails, Scotty’s Movies N’ Tunes, and Tucson Only Kind Of sorrys. He once lived in a shack in the middle of an abandoned sugercane field full of giant spiders and rats, because YOLO.