Shouting Grounds

There are those moments in your life (increasingly so, now that the Internet is so ubiquitous) were you may experience something for the first time, only to find out later that the opportunities to do so are drastically limited, or worse yet, in your ignorance, you discover that you will never experience it again. This is case with myself and kung fu cinema.

I really didn’t start watching and buying movies until the end of the 90′s, about the time when the modern-classic age of hong kong cinema was coming to and end. China now had possession of Hong Kong and many famous directors had fled for fear that their craft would be handicapped in some way by the political shift that was taking place. The great films of the 80′s and 90′s had already made their mark on the collective soul of chinese action cinema, and I was seeing it all for the first time.

The Prodigal Son

Out of the movies I’ve seen, “The Prodigal Son” film stood out. It stood out from the thousands of films because of it’s technical merit and because the respect for the chosen technique, featured in the story; Wing Chun.

No…not the band Wang Chun, or whatever…Wing Chun is a close-range Chinese fighting style. It is the style that Bruce Lee had been proficient in prior to creating his own forms. The secret behind the style is that the practitioner can defend and attack at the same time, without wasting energy with wild movement. Whether or not it could stand up to a Brazilian Ju-Jitsu onslaught (see “no”) is not my concern. It is a poetic style and lends itself well to being the featured art of a kung fu film.

Here is a scene from The Prodigal Son, which is, in my opinion, the finest technical fight scene I’ve ever seen in a film:

The fight scene is masterful in adhering to the rules of Wing Chun and not only is it fast, but it’s technically flawless. Very cool. That’s one that benefits from a slow-motion viewing or two.

Along with the riveting action sequences and technical accuracy there’s a great story and some comedy too. As with most Hong Kong action cinema you get a little of everything. One second someone’s wife could be getting raped, and the next there’ll be a fart joke. Couple this with the fact that the bad guy always gets killed/defeated and you now have the principle reasons why I love kung fu movies.

With the tone of recent martial arts action movies out of China turning, primarily, to tragic themes (Curse of the Golden Flower, Hero, Fearless, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, to name a few), I miss the old care-free days of “Cantonese comedy”-infused films.

Just for fun, here’s the final fight scene (complete with shitty dubbing and ass-hair-burning musical score)(watch for the headbutt, awesome!):

Fucking Sweet

The actor in the first fight scene on the bridges, who is practicing Wing Chun, is Lam Ching Ying. Who died in 1997 from liver cancer. So he was long dead by the time I even saw this movie. Sucks that he’s not around to school the next generation of action stars.

Here’s a great page detailing the life and death of a great kung fu action star.

Here are some bonus clips of Lam Ching Ying in action (awsome):
Spook Encounters 2
Magnificent Butcher
Wheelchair Beatdown

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Culture, Entertainment, Film review, Geek, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.