Tag: martial arts

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

Karate Kid
Legends

Director – Jonathan Entwhistle – 2025 – US – Cert. 12a – 94m

*****

Latest franchise entry plays by all the rules that you would expect, yet somehow manages to completely break the mould and come up with something fresh and original – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, May 28th

All a Karate Kid movie has to do is put a boy in peril from a bully or similar, then have him schooled in martial arts by a trainer to discover his inner strength and ultimately overcome the bully in combat. This is facilitated by a fight competition at the end, in which the two come face to face with one another. While the original The Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen, 1984) clearly struck enough of a chord to spawn more films, some entries, such as The Karate Kid Part III (John G. Avildsen, 1989), have felt worn, tired and clichéd.

That changed with the genuinely brilliant idea of introducing Hong Kong’s clown prince of kung fu Jackie Chan as the trainer in the two decades later remake The Karate Kid (Harold Zwart, 2010), which breathed new life into the big screen franchise (there have also been live action and animated spin-offs made for television).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Yes, Madam!
(Huang Jia Shi Jie,
皇家师姐)

Director – Corey Yuen – 1985 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 93m

***1/2

Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock’s star debut, in which they play two plain-clothes, kickboxing Hong Kong cops – on Blu-ray from Monday, December 12th 2002 and now part of Art of Action, a major UK-wide season celebrating the artistry of real action choreography at cinemas across the UK from Monday, October 21st through November 2024

Michelle Yeoh, here credited as Michelle Kheng (in her early Hong Kong films she was often credited as Michelle Khan, and her birth nameis Yeoh Choo Kheng) plays Inspector Ng, a no-nonsense police officer who always gets her man (and, interestingly, all the criminals here are men), as illustrated in the opening scene when a flasher accosts her in a convenience store, and she promptly arrests him.

Her mentor Richard Nornen (Michael Harry, later seen in An Angel at my Table, Jane Campion, 1990) is visited in his hotel room by professional assassin Mr. Dik (Dick Wei) who shoots him point-blank through an apple in Nornen’s mouth in order to obtain a two-frame film clip of a legal contract for his gangster boss Tin Wai-keung (James Tien).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Enter The Dragon

Director – Robert Clouse – 2018 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 94m (cut)

£6.99, Dist Warner Screen Classics

***

Reviewed on VHS for Manga Mania sometime in the late 1990s.

Now over twenty years old, this 1973 offering holds up pretty well as an average HK martial arts movie and remains a milestone in terms of Western involvement in the HK film industry. The plot, which owes more than a little to Ian Fleming’s Dr.No, has Bruce Lee sent to the island home of despot Han, a trafficker in opium and young women who has disgraced Lee’s temple and killed Lee’s sister. Han doesn’t allow guns on his island and recruits fighting talent by putting on martial arts contests with intent to employ the best entrants (an idea reworked later with supernatural trimmings in Mortal Kombat, Paul W.S. Anderson, 1995) – among them the unknown Jim Kelly (sporting embarrassing period afro) and the young John Saxon.

Much of the proceedings are taken up with one on one contest fights, with numerous yellow or white clad extras clapping politely after every blow or kick. The stunts remain impressive, but this current release isn’t in widescreen (unless you count titles, credits, and two fight scenes duplicated in widescreen at the start of the tape) with the result that essential parts of the fight sequences (e.g.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Boy Kills World

Director – Moritz Mohr – 2023 – Germany, US, South Africa – Cert. 18 – 111m

***1/2

Relentless, non-stop action via a deaf-mute, orphaned kid, schooled in martial arts, returning to the city as a grown man to wreak vengeance on those who killed his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Elite family the Van Der Koys have taken control of the city and instigated an annual ceremony known as The Culling, a physical contest staged for television in a vast arena in which anyone who opposes the Van Der Koys and the way they run the place is killed. This was of little concern to Boy, who as a child (twins Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti from TV series Big Little Lies, 2017-19) grew up in a carefree existence eating Frosty Pops cereal every morning with his sister Mina (Quinn Copeland) and, the pair naively making insulting hand gestures at publicly displayed Van Der Koy statues during the day which gets their family onto the list of candidates for The Culling. And so his parents and sister are despatched in the ceremony, leaving Boy a traumatised deaf-mute.

All of the above comes out early on in a mixture of flashback and over-the-top interior monologue (hilariously voiced by H.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Lady Reporter
(Shi Jie Da Shai
aka
The Blonde Fury,
Righting Wrongs II,
Above The Law II)

Director – Mang Hoi – 1989 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 90m

Movie ***

Action Sequences *****

Female FBI agent Cynthia Rothrock is sent to Hong Kong to put a stop to a counterfeit money scam operated by an editor out of a newspapers premises – on Blu-ray from Monday, June 26th

With New York facing a deluge of counterfeit banknotes originating in Hong Kong, and involving several felons with considerable martial arts fighting skills, agent Cindy (Cynthia Rothrock) is sent from San Francisco to Hong Kong to put the forgers out of business. She stays with her friend Judy (Elizabeth Lee) and begins working undercover as a reporter for the paper under Miss Miu. Going out to cover a fire with her camera, Cindy enters the blazing building and rescues a child, attracting the attention of rival publication photojournalist Shorty (director Mang Hoi) and his colleague (Chin Siu-ho). Shorty’s dad (Wu Ma) is the rival newspaper’s editor.

Cindy attempts to infiltrate the counterfeiting operation, but is discovered by Miu and escapes before she can see anything. Shorty, meanwhile, gets a lucky break and witnesses the abduction of Judy’s father, Prosecutor Yu (Roy Chiao), who is preparing the court case against the man behind the counterfeiting operation, newspaper editor Wang Dak (Ronny Yu).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Jackie Chan’s
Police Story
Trilogy

Police Story (Ging Chaat Goo Si, 警察故事)

*****

Director – Jackie Chan – 1985 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 100m

Police Story II (Ging Chaat Goo Si Juk Jaap, 警察故事續集)

***1/2

Director – Jackie Chan – 1988 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 101m

Police Story 3 Supercop (Ging Chaat Goo Si III: Chiu Kup Ging Chaat, 警察故事３超級警察)

*****

Director – Stanley Tong– 1992 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 96m

The Police Story trilogy is a landmark of Hong Kong action cinema. As David West points out in his informative essay in the accompanying booklet to Eureka’s welcome 4K UHD release of the three films, the first one was the point in Jackie Chan’s career where he broke with period dramas to make a vehicle for himself that was totally modern, set in contemporary Hong Kong rather than an historic Chinese past or even the early twentieth century of his own Project A series of films. Action films set in the present started to emerge in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, with a couple of them directed by Chan’s fellow former Peking Opera schoolmate Sammo Hung, who managed to secure roles for Jackie some way down the cast list in Winners And Sinners (1983) and My Lucky Stars (1985).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Everything
Everywhere
All At Once

Director – Daniels (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 139m

*****

Do you know kung fu? A launderette owner in trouble with the IRS is sucked into serial, parallel worlds to defeat the being who threatens to annihilate the multiverse – available on demand in the UK from Monday, June 13th

You could describe it as a Cubist take on The Matrix. Or a mother-daughter relationship drama. Or a multiverse movie. Or a film about filing taxes with the IRS. Or a (multiple set of) romance(s). Or a Michelle Yeoh action movie. Or a Chinese American movie. Or a film put together unlike any other you’ve ever seen. All these descriptions would be accurate.

Chinese American Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) runs her own business. A launderette (or laundromat in American parlance). She sits at the table in her apartment which is covered with piles of receipts. She is sorting through them in preparation for an upcoming interview with the IRS. She isn’t sure she’s ready.

This pressing issue aside, her life is not without its challenges. Her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, formerly the kid from Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, Steven Spielberg, 1983; The Goonies, Richard Donner, 1985) is attempting to file for divorce and wants her to sign the papers.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Detective Chinatown 3
(Tang Ren
Jie Tan An 3,
唐人街探案3)

Director – Chen Sicheng – 2021 – China – Cert. 15 – 136m

****

The Chinese franchise’s super-sleuth and bumbling sidekick join forces with their Japanese and Thai counterparts in Japan – out in cinemas on Tuesday, January 25th and 26th only

No sooner have the brilliant crime-solving sleuth Qin Feng (Liu Haoran) and his likeable if barely competent sidekick Tang Ren (Wang Baoqiang) flown in to Tokyo and met their contact there, the sharp and colourful Hiroshi Noda (Satoshi Tsumabuki), than they find themselves embroiled in one of the most seriously bonkers action sequences in the movies in recent years when members of (at least) two gangs suddenly attack in the airport to the inspired accompaniment of the pop song ‘Welcome To Tokyo’ (which gets rolled out again for a cheerful, cast of thousands, song and dance routine accompanying the end credits). Extensive mayhem ensures. A man rolls down a long flight of steps in an oil drum. Two groups of smartly uniformed and skirted women do battle (one group in red, one in blue – stewardesses from rival airlines, perhaps?). Workmen in hard hats and overalls descend from scaffolding to join the melee.

Knowing this will be an impossible act to follow, the film then throws in a pursuer Jack Jaa (Thai martial arts sensation Tony Jaa from Ong-bak, Prachya Pinkaew, 2003) on the Tokyo subway before having the trio flee him on go-karts while he comes unstoppably and hilariously after them by stealing a child’s bicycle with tiny wheels.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Movies

Bazaar Jumpers
(Pao Ku Shao Nian,
跑酷少年)

Director – Zhiqiang Hao – 2012 – China – Cert. N/C PG – 61m

***

Two Uyghur boys and their parkour team in Northern China hone their skills for an upcoming “China proper” tournament in Beijing – now available to rent online in the new Chinese Cinema Season 2021 in the UK & Ireland as part of the Approaching Reality documentary strand until Wednesday, May 12th

NB.

(1) Please read this review before watching because the recommended N/C PG certificate, while completely legal, perhaps ought to be higher because of one particular sequence (detailed in the final Spoiler Alert paragraph).

(2) The title seems to vary between Bazaar Jumper (singular) and Bazaar Jumpers (plural) on the film’s promotional literature. I’ve gone with the plural as that’s what’s on the film print. The singular is on the trailer below.

Urumqi, Xinjiang, one of the parts of Northern China with a large Uyghur section of the population. That’s not really writ large here, and as I was watching I was wondering what the spoken language was until I worked out it was Uyghur. The film is ostensibly about a group of late teenage, Muslim boys obsessed with parkour (free running), a physical craze in which obstacles such as buildings, walls and street furniture are climbed or traversed rather than gone around.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Empty Hands
(Hung Sau Dou,
空手道)


Director – Chapman To – 2017 – Hong Kong – Cert. N/C 15+ – 97m

Film *****

Subtitle legibility *

A Hong Kong Chinese-Japanese must come to peace with her late, estranged karate-obsessed father – online in the UK as part of Hong Kong Focus 2021 from Tuesday, February 9th to Monday, February 15th

To get the subtitle issue out of the way first, the subs here are what subs often used to be forty years ago – white with no black edge around the lettering. So as soon as the lettering appears over a white area of the image, it’s rendered invisible and illegible. These days, that system is rarely used so it’s rarely a problem. But there are several scenes here when it’s an issue. Nothing that will fundamentally spoil the film, but it’s a pity that someone cut a corner and didn’t get this quite right. If it ever turns up on home video, I hope someone redoes the subs properly to make them legible. The translation seems fine, which makes the poor legibility far more irritating. Now then, the film…

This follows the time-worn, martial arts movie template of a hero with something to prove so they train for a big competition fight in which they somehow find themselves.… Read the rest