Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book

by Meyers, Ric

  Around this somewhat stereotypical story, Woo lavishes wit, invention, and style in addition to his customary flair for gunfire. An honest cop (Danny Lee) is hot on the title character’s trail, but the film really takes off when he corners the killer in the blind girl’s apartment. Unaware that the men have their guns in each other’s faces, she makes tea and the two pretend to be friends for her benefit. This was a stunning, refreshing dance of death deftly designed by Woo, and it immediately separated the film and filmmaker from the pack.

  Ultimately, the two antagonists team up against the greater evil, and Woo stages a final blowout in and around a church … before capping the invigorating film with the bleakest of black comedy jokes that, again, delighted his attentive audience. Here Woo firmly establishes his cinematic trademarks: the “Cantonese Stand-off” of multiple antagonists pointing guns in each other’s faces in various combinations, flocks of doves flying hither/yon, and an artful use of slow-mo. Movie lovers could see echoes of this in previous works by director Sam Peckinpah, but Woo brought it to new, nearly ludicrous levels. Woo created fever-dreams of violence on the nature of brotherhood, betrayal, moral villains, and immoral heroes, all delivered with a filmmaking prowess that echoed the best of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Sergio Leone.

  Once up to such rarefied heights, Woo seemed unsure where to go in the down-and-dirty world of Hong Kong Cinema, which explains his name on the credits of Just Heroes (1989) — a fun, frenetic, but overly familiar film that could be considered A Better Tomorrow-lite. According to modern sources, Woo collaborated on the direction of this derivative film as a favor to his ex-mentor Chang Cheh, who was struggling to survive. So Woo teamed with another ex-Cheh-assistant director, Wu Ma, as well as actors Danny Lee, David Chiang, and even Stephen Chow, to finish this film.

  It was just as well that Woo had this distraction because, elsewhere, the infamous “Tsui Hark Syndrome” was kicking in. Woo wanted to go his own way. Tsui Hark wanted Woo to go his way. There’s some question as to what happened next, but what is unarguable is that Woo directed Bullet in the Head (1990) while Tsui Hark directed A Better Tomorrow III (1989), which had some “interesting” similarities to Woo’s work. There’s no question, however, that Hark worked round the clock to beat Bullet in the Head into Hong Kong theaters. There’s also little question that Bullet in the Head is the better film, despite contractual alliances that locked Chow Yun-fat into Hark’s prequel/sequel.

  A Better Tomorrow III pictures Chow’s character from the first film in Saigon of 1974 — showing viewers how he became the man he was. Bullet in the Head is a completely different animal — an epic saga of three Hong Kong friends who seek their fortune in Vietnam at the worst possible time. Tony Leung Chiu-wai took over for Chow in Woo’s work (which would not be the last time he does that). Although smaller in stature, Leung’s acting talent is large, and he suffers better than anyone in cinema. And that skill comes in handy in this bruising classic, as friendships dissolve into betrayal and brutality.

  The title refers to the film’s central betrayal, as a greedy friend (“All I want is this box of gold … is that so much to ask?” is the actual line in the film) shoots a wounded friend to keep him quiet as they hide during an attack. But instead of killing him, the lead lodged in his skull makes him a pain-wracked killing machine. Jacky Cheung (aka Jackie Cheung), once known as “little Jacky” because of Jackie Chan’s support in his early career, had developed into an extraordinary composer, singer, and actor, and his performance here, as the one with the title affliction, is beautifully realized. And, of course, Tony suffers brilliantly as he’s compelled to put his friend out of his misery — building to a final confrontation with the betrayer (Waise Lee, who played much the same role in the original A Better Tomorrow).

  In the original release, the film ends with the screen going dark and a shot being heard. But in subsequent home entertainment releases, a different, longer finale was seen: the confrontation extends to the docks where the two ex-friends have an extended, exhausting, ferocious joust with smashing cars and blazing guns. Once again, the connections to Chang Cheh or Lu Chin-ku’s bloody, battering wuxia films can be clearly seen. This is truly gun fu, with automatic weapons replacing swords.

  Now a fan can hunt down the many versions of the film available in various incarnations all over the world. Woo’s original cut was around three hours long. The studio’s cut was about two hours. Film Festivals show, and certain DVDs contain, a two hour and fifteen minute version that Woo generally approves.

  Following that exhausting effort, however, Woo needed to regroup and rethink. The grouping is obvious in his next film, Once a Thief (1991), but not necessarily the thinking. Although it marks a reunion with Chow Yun-fat and Leslie Cheung, the film seems forced and unnatural. Although it starts well, as a Hitchcockian romp about three art thieves, it eventually seques into an odd payback tale, with a wheelchair-bound Chow supposedly seeking revenge, before degenerating into an unwelcome slapstick slaughter that has more in common with To Hell with the Devil than A Better Tomorrow.

  The writing was on the wall. With rumors spreading that Woo was tough to work with, and the 1997 changeover looming, the director started searching for safer shores. But, before he left, he wanted to leave his homeland with one last blast of concentrated Woo-ness. And, after glorifying criminals in most of his work, he wanted to do the same for cops. Hard Boiled (1992) was a cunning combination of Woo’s best work, from the elegant to the overblown. Chow Yun-fat was back in the lead as this film’s version of “Dirty Harry Bullitt,” with Tony Leung alongside as a cop deeply undercover in the gun-running trade.

  Woo fills the film with bravura sequences, from the opening gun battle in a tea house, through a blow-out in a garage, to the final, elongated, elaborate war in a hospital (which includes an extended sequence through halls, into elevators, and down stairs without a single cut). For pure, high-powered fun, Hard Boiled more than lives up to its name, and works well as Woo’s suitable so-long to Hong Kong … for now.

  But just because Woo was packing his bags didn’t mean that Hong Kong was through with guns. Remember, this is an industry that created the Bruce Lee clones — and weapons were far easier to replicate than the king of kung fu. Even noted schlockmeister Wong Jing was able to till this fertile ground with what many consider his best film, God of Gamblers (1989). Chow Yun-fat starred as the title character, who, when egregiously betrayed by his brother, becomes a child-like amnesiac, who is convinced to impersonate the God of Gamblers by a con man (Andy Lau). Obviously inspired by Rain Man (1988) as well as A Better Tomorrow, the film’s ramifications will be explored in a later chapter.

  Meanwhile, predominantly filling the Woo void were Ringo Lam Ling-tung, Andrew Lau Wai-keung, and, perhaps most importantly, Johnnie To Kei-fung. Beatles-loving Lam was born in 1955 and studied cinema in Toronto before returning to Hong Kong. There he tried a few romances before teaming with Chow Yun-fat on the influential cop thriller City on Fire (1987) which deeply and sincerely influenced Quentin Tarantino. The director and star followed up that hit with Prison on Fire (1987), School on Fire (1988), and Prison on Fire II (1991) before creating Full Contact (1993), which was the closest thing to a Woo film without Woo.

  Lau, meanwhile, had started as an award-winning cinematographer, filming Legendary Weapons of China, Millionaire’s Express, and City on Fire, among others, before he made a jump into the director’s chair in 1990. There he would again flounder in a variety of genres until he hit pay dirt with the Young and Dangerous series (1996-1998), which was basically A Better Tomorrow: The Teen Years.

  He peppered his resume with some great wuxia fantasies like The Storm Riders (1998) before teaming with Alan Mak Siu-fai on the influential Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-2003). This saga of a cop infiltrating the mob while a mobster infiltrates the cops was turned into The Departed, Martin Scorcese’s Oscar-winning 2006 film. Many feel the Hong Kong version was superior — es
pecially since the American adaptation goes head-shot-crazy as soon as it deviates from the original’s plot.

  But it was Johnnie To who took John Woo’s inspiration and made gun fu something uniquely his own. Starting, like so many other Hong Kong directors, by trying a mix of genres, he found that he loved them all, and was able to excel in each. He was great at comedies (1990s The Fun the Luck and the Tycoon), dramas (1989’s All About Ah-long), satires (1992’s Justice My Foot), superheroes (The Heroic Trio), and even kung fu (1993’s The Bare-Footed Kid). But even though it would be more than ten years between his first (1988’s The Big Heat) and second gun fu film (1999’s The Mission), it was in this genre that he would elicit international acclaim.

  He followed those memorable thrillers with such blockbusters as Running Out of Time (1999), Fulltime Killer (2001), and PTU: Police Tactical Unit (2003) — all while also creating a wealth of such other comedy and martial art classics as Love on a Diet (2001), Running on Karma (2003), and Throw Down (2004) — often with his collaborator Wai Ka-fai. With Election (2005), Election 2: Harmony is a Virtue (2006), and Exiled (2006), he shows his Woo influence as well as his mastery.

  With these three films essentially being his versions of A Better Tomorrow and Bullet in the Head, Johnnie To cultivates Woo soil with his own crops. Each of his successive films (2007’s masterful Mad Detective, and 2009’s thought-provoking Vengeance being just two) have become a cause for celebration for film fans throughout the world.

  And speaking of the world, that was John Woo’s oyster when he left Asia. He was renowned as the greatest action filmmaker ever, with fans in every pocket of the globe. He was declared an artist and auteur … even a genius. It seemed that nothing could stop him. What could possibly go wrong?

  Read on ….

  Picture identifications (clockwise from upper left):

  Chuck Norris vs. Tadashi Yamashita in The Octagon; Chuck Norris vs. David Carradine in Lone Wolf McQuade; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Shredder; Steven Seagal; Tom Laughlin in Billy Jack; Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.

  Let’s face it. The American film industry doesn’t like kung fu. One reason is that the American audience who loves it is not the same as the American audience that loves chop-socky. There’s some overlap, sure, but mostly the ones who love true kung fu films are the ones who love musicals. Real kung fu films combine the emotions of opera with the movement of dance, even ballet.

  This reality is totally lost on the producers who fashion and market their chop-socky to the urban audience. If they honestly looked at which American kung fu films succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, it was the ones that were fashioned and promoted to the family audience. Rush Hour, Kung Fu Panda (2008), The 2010 “Karate” Kid. Even Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

  The bulk of the American film industry denies this — relegating those films, and others, to the category of “exceptions.” Or they take the likes of Hero, and, especially, Shaolin Soccer (2001), and package them as urban audience films, which they are, quite patently, not. It would be as if distributors had taken Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Blazing Saddles (1974), stuck samurai swords in the characters’ hands on the DVD covers, dressed them in t-shirts, swathed the foreign backgrounds in manila paper, and sold them as exploitation flicks. That is, if they released them at all.

  Whether this is simply blinkered ignorance or standard operating racism, is for you to decide. What’s quantifiable is that Hollywood is much more comfortable with Japanese martial arts: karate, aikido, judo, kick-boxing, even ninjitsu — the kind of straight-limbed, muscle-and-anger-driven fighting that has been tinseltown’s stock-in-trade since the advent of the motion-picture camera.

  In order to make the action clear in the earliest days of cinema, directors favored exaggerated, wide, movements like the classic round-house punch. This long, elaborate, telegraphed move found favor amongst producers and was cemented in the 1940s, when long fight scenes became common-place in Westerns and cliffhanger serials. There, subtlety was to be avoided at, literally, all costs. After all, training actors and filming elaborate fights took time, and time was money.

  “In Hong Kong,” Jet Li said, “a greater proportion of the audience are used to fight scenes that last five to ten minutes with unusual, esoteric wushu movements. But I think Americans may be more used to boxing — with all its straight strikes — that last maybe thirty seconds before someone falls down. But there really wasn’t more time to do the martial arts in America than there was in Hong Kong. You see, in Hong Kong, if the shooting schedule is for three months, we work on the kung fu scenes for maybe two months, and the drama for one. In American films, maybe two months on the drama, one month on the fighting. So we still don’t have enough time.”

  Studios may not have the time, but, in truth, they really don’t have the inclination either. Because Enter the Dragon producer Fred Weintraub was right when he said that Americans think of kung fu as fantasy. First, it has been sold to them as a martial art, not as self-improvement, and second, what’s the point of having a system that takes years to master when you can just pick up a gun? U.S. history is not about “excellence of self.” It’s about “excellence of aim.” To put it bluntly, Americans have never been without the gun, and a majority of chop-socky filmgoers really can’t understand why two people would engage in a dance of death with limbs or swords when a bullet could resolve matters much more easily.

  Ironically, as more Asian kung fu films are bought for distribution in the English-speaking world, standard operating ignorance has come back to haunt the translators. Some of the best kung fu in John Woo’s Red Cliff was edited out of the American version for being too unrealistic, when it most patently wasn’t. It was merely unusual to American editors’ eyes, who were accustomed to chi-wasting round-house punches. One of the best jokes in Ip Man (2008) was ruined by translators who didn’t comprehend the kind of kung fu the hero was doing (changing “if you don’t start fighting” to “if you start fighting” because they couldn’t distinguish between defensive and offensive kung fu).

  That originally started to change with the coming of Bruce Lee. Prior to him, martial arts in American movies were relegated to glimpses of exotic, esoteric fighting skills they called “judo” in Blood on the Sun (1945) starring Jimmy Cagney and The Manchurian Candidate (1962) starring Frank Sinatra. An argument can be made (and I often do) that the first real kung fu fight scene in English-speaking cinema was the train battle between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in the second James Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963). There the characters only move as much as they have to, and shun round-house punches in favor of direct, effective techniques. They also involve their cramped environment Jackie Chan-style … as much as two hulking, muscle-bound Englishmen can.

  Also in there kicking was Tom Laughlin. Born in 1938, Laughlin became an actor in the 1950s, and was featured in several major Hollywood productions, including Tea and Sympathy (1956), South Pacific (1958), and the original Gidget (1959). His destiny, however, was in the exploitation genre. Giving up the tinseltown rat race, he decided to write, direct, produce, edit, and star in The Young Sinner (1965), establishing his ongoing theme of misunderstood youth. Two years later he hit the mother lode with The Born Losers (1967), which introduced his character of a heroic, laconic, karate-trained half-breed named Billy Jack.

  The Born Losers made more than ten million dollars — an extraordinary amount of money for a mere exploitation film. He spent the next four years making, and then distributing, the movie he is most remembered for: Billy Jack (1971). This story of an ex-Green Beret who fights rednecks and a corrupt sheriff’s office to protect a Freedom School for hippie runaways (located on an Indian reservation, yet!) featured real-life martial arts expert Bong Soo Han. The movie cost eight hundred thousand dollars to make, and made more than eighteen million. Laughlin followed that with heart-felt, but increasingly less effective, sequels, as well as The Master Gunfighter (1975) — his portentous remake of Hideo Gosha’s
great Japanese epic Goyokin (1969), transposed to the American West.

  But, by then, Enter the Dragon had appeared. The Chinese kung fu cat was out of the bag, as it were, and once seen, could not be forgotten … but damned if Hollywood could figure out a way to exploit it. To their credit, producer Weintraub and director Robert Clouse tried to recapture lightning in a bottle. To their debit, they didn’t do a very good job. Their big mistake: avoiding kung fu like the plague. In 1974, they featured Enter co-star Jim Kelly as Black Belt Jones (1974) — a fondly remembered blaxploitation effort with a serious credibility problem. Why would the white mob be so intent on taking over a martial arts school in the middle of Watts anyway?

  Next the duo tried Golden Needles (1974). Brilliantly (sarcasm), they replaced the lithe Lee with the burly Joe Don Baker, who starred as a brutish mercenary out to find a fabled Asian statue that held the promise of eternal youth. When that didn’t work in any way, Weintraub and Clouse finally decided to return to the source. If they had found a kung fu talent like Lee in Hong Kong before, maybe they could do it again. And here my memory runs into trouble.

  After my formal interview with Fred Weintraub more than twenty-five years ago, I brought up the remarkable similarity between Yul Brynner in The Ultimate Warrior (1975) and Gordon Liu Chia-hui in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, which appeared two years later. At the time of The Ultimate Warrior’s production, Liu was making the transition from a supporting actor and stuntman on Chang Cheh’s films to Huang Fei-hong in Liu Chia-liang’s Challenge of the Masters (1976). My contention was that if Gordon had starred in Weintraub and Clouse’s post-apocalyptic action drama, they might have made America’s second great kung fu discovery.

  To the best of my recollection, Weintraub alluded to the fact that he had, indeed, scoured Hong Kong for a new star; that Gordon, although young, showed great promise; and, if not for Liu’s Shaw Brothers contract and/or the American studio’s desire for an established box office name, The Ultimate Warrior would have been a showcase for Liu Chia family fist the way Enter the Dragon was a showcase for jeet kune do. As it was, the well-intentioned, fight-filled film collapsed under the weight of its mediocre choreography and screenplay. Following that fiasco, Weintraub reteamed with Jim Kelly for Hot Potato (1976) — a dreadfully titled, painfully mediocre film with the actor demoted to playing one of three mercenaries hired to rescue a senator’s daughter held captive in Thailand.