THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. This is Re/Play, where we take a fresh look at an older film, TV series, or video game to see if fond memories hold up under remastered scrutiny. This week, a Sammo Hung double feature: 2K restorations of The Iron-Fisted Monk (1977) and The Prodigal Son (1981). From Arrow Video.
THE MOVIE: The Iron-Fisted Monk (1977)
ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: August 25, 1977
NEW FORMAT: 2K restoration of the original uncensored print from Chinese film distributor Fortune Star. A host of audio/subtitle options, ranging from the original Cantonese (1.0), Mandarin (1.0), and two options for the English dub (1.0 or 5.1). Optional English subtitles. From Arrow Video.
RE/PLAYING: In the years before his directorial debut with The Iron-Fisted Monk, Sammo Hung must have spent as much time on film sets as an avid learner as an action choreographer. The way this film moves, employing an array of camera tricks that have been paid tribute to and brazenly swiped from in the years since — slight pan shots that stop just before the fists go flying, hand-held tracking shots, and my personal favorite, that snap zoom — you’d swear he’d been making movies from the crib. Assessing his talents as this film’s co-screenwriter? That’s a different story. (He shares writing credits with Huang Feng and Yu Ting.)
The Iron-Fisted Monk is a tonally mixed bag. It’s a Kung Fu comedy — arguably the first — and a rape-revenge saga. It’s mostly the former, which makes the sexual violence that comes later, and then later again, feel distracting. But I’m jumping ahead. The film follows Hawker (Hung), an overeager kung fu student training in martial arts at a local Shaolin temple. He’s forging his body to become a revenge machine; we learn later that a group of Manchu officials have turned his village into their personal fiefdom and had killed his former master in a dispute. Hawker wants to put the kibosh on the entire Manchu crew, and for a while, The Iron Fisted Monk seems like it will be a one-man mission.
Of course, Hung is just warming up. As Hawker teams up with Sam Tak (Chan Sing), the Shaolin monk who first saw Hawker’s inner fury and brought him to the temple to hone it, the film diverges into a subplot about the Manchu’s brutalization of a small local family. I looked for names I could assign to these characters, but they mostly don’t exist. There’s Liang (Lo Hoi-pang), Liang’s wife (Chu Ching), Liang’s mother (Lai Man), and Liang’s sister (Wei-Ying Chen). They all die over the course of the movie, but only one gets a valorous death. (Guess who.) The others are put through a misogynistic thresher. Due to startling and despicable story reasons that force his hand, Liang soon joins Hawker’s revenge quest, and The Iron-Fisted Monk returns to its more amiable and frequently exhilarating presentation.
And it is exhilarating. The story meanders quite a bit for a 93-minute movie and doubles down in unnecessary places, but no one will accuse Hung of botching the action in his first feature film. The fight choreography keeps moving, so the edits move, too: a flurry of cuts when the kicks and punches become too chaotic for our hero and simmering long shots that hold just when showdowns threaten to become personal. Hung also employs color in enjoyable ways, with many of the Manchu’s harsh brigade donning vivid, ostentatious hues that contrast Hawker and the monk’s tempered gray garbs. Revenge burns bright, but the fits donned by those who seek it are modest.
The character work in The Iron-Fisted Monk is minor, but it’s effective in its casting — Hung has serious charisma among his many talents. When you watch Hawker escape from the Shaolin Temple (a slight against the master who took him in) because he believes he’s ready to kick some Manchu ass (he isn’t), he’s grinning. For most of this film, I was grinning, too. I don’t regret my frowns; I regret the creative choices that put them on my face to begin with.
ACTUALLY SPECIAL FEATURES: Two quick, poorly assembled interviews with Sammo Hung, who speaks about his experience as a first-time director and a bit of behind-the-scenes trivia. Neither interview has anything revelatory or particularly insightful about them. Beyond the trailer and a nice photo gallery, the film remains the primary highlight of this disc — though take some time to enjoy commentary from martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng, whose veritable lexicon of knowledge and insight makes the compulsory rewatch all the more enjoyable.
RE/PLAY VALUE: Sammo Hung has cast a long shadow in Hong Kong cinema and the international strata with inventive fight choreography and the furious camera acumen to match. The Iron-Fisted Monk might not have a consistent tone, but its influence is far-reaching and justifiably so. The Arrow Blu-ray is a gorgeous remaster for Hung completists, Kung Fu nuts, and the cinematically curious. After all, movies like Kill Bill and John Wick weren’t assembled in a vacuum. Here’s where your favorite action movies were born.
7/10
The Iron-Fisted Monk is available on Blu-ray now. For purchasing information, click this.
Directed by Sammo Hung.
Written by Huang Feng, Yu Ting, and Sammo Hung.
Cinematography Lee Yiu-ting.
Starring Sammo Hung, Chan Sing, Fung Hark-On, and Lo Hoi-pang
Produced by Raymond Chow.
Not rated. Includes kung fu action and two severe depictions of rape.
THE MOVIE: The Prodigal Son (1981)
ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: December 22, 1981
NEW FORMAT: 2K restoration from the original theatrical and home video versions from Fortune Star. (There’s little difference between the two; the home video version has different credits.) Optional English subtitles. From Arrow Video.
RE/PLAYING: The Prodigal Son is equal parts broad comedy, revenge drama, and instructional pamphlet. It’s great at being all of these things, even if the elements don’t always blend together as cleanly as they’re meant to.
The first aspect, comedy, is the biggest draw of the movie. Biao Yuen plays Leung Chang (a variation of the real-life fighter Leung Jan), a duke’s son who believes he’s the best street fighter in Foshan. The way he throws himself into dust-ups at the slightest provocation and watches every opponent he faces fall before his furious skills, you’d get the impression that was so. The first few minutes of The Prodigal Son is a riot to watch as Leung leaves all kinds of cartoon bruises and welts on the faces of his humbled — and seething — combatants.
Leung’s due for a rude awakening. The duke bribed all the would-be vanquished to take a fall against this neophyte martial artist. So when he faces off with Leung Yee-tai (Lam Ching-Ying), an opera actor in drag who sneers at his bribe, Leung gets his clock thoroughly cleaned. Humiliated, Leung throws himself at the victor, begging to learn the ways of Wing Chun. First and foremost, Yee-tai’s an actor; more, he’s particular about who knows the martial art.
The Prodigal Son aspires to more than mere kung fu thrills. It’s about honor: who has it and who never will. It’s about the ways we fool ourselves into believing we’re more than what we are, the thorough trouncing our spirits take when we find out that’s not the case, and the journey necessary to take if we’re ever to learn and grow. The revenge drama aspect of Hung’s film is just as wild, but its steel is tempered by gravity and stakes. Leung Chang’s earlier fights were fun because they were made to be. When he comes up against another prodigal son looking for a worthy adversary, Lord Ngai Fei (Frankie Chan), reality comes with a fury.
Ngai’s duke father doesn’t pay people off. He employs bodyguards who don’t blink at killing potential rivals. Yee-tai’s opera troupe gets the worst in a sequence involving a brutal, beautiful, on-stage battle. Flags are lit aflame and swung at Yee-tai, and his miraculously timed flips dance around them. It’s stunning to watch, not just due to the spectacle, which is considerable, but the drama that’s spoken through leg sweeps, thrown fists, and flames burning down hopes and dreams as it goes along.
Sammo Hung sang the praises of the Wing Chun martial art and incorporated it in several of his movies; The Warriors Two (1978) featured an earlier cinematic version of practitioner Leung Jan, and was played by Bryan Leung. Hung makes a late-film appearance as Wong Wah-bo, Yee-tai’s master, who brings Leung Chang and Yee-tai into his modest home and lets them convalesce — and bicker among themselves. But, through the repetition of Wing Chun and the frequent smacking of the Muk Yan Jong dummy, Leung and Yee-tai learn to work together.
Watching these sequences, which were shot on a set with hay and dirt tossed around the floor to resemble a provincial farm home, says to me that Hung’s primary goal was to convey the importance of the art more than the cinematic scope and sweep he employs in every other part of his film. He’s showing us what Wing Chun has always been: a close-quarters technique that requires trust between student and teacher. In this regard, The Prodigal Son is providing instruction. It also reveals something unexpected between Biao Yuen and Lam Ching-Ying’s characters: their understated but no less potent intimacy. I don’t know if that was Sammo Hung’s intention, but the unspoken love between these two men is the film’s secret superpower.
ACTUALLY SPECIAL FEATURES: Unlike The Iron-Fisted Monk, The Prodigal Son packs serious special feature heat. There are two commentary tracks: one from martial arts movie expert Frank Djeng and actor Bobby Samuels (The Corruptor) and another from action experts Mike Leeder & Arne Venema. Check out Wing Chun 101, a primer interview with Wing Chun instructor Alex Richter; Life Imitating Art, an archival featurette with interviews from producer Guy Lai talking about the martial art, featuring illustrated demonstrations by Sifu Austin Goh and Jude Poyer; The Heroic Trio, an archival interview series with Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, and Frankie Chan, who reflect on the making of the film. And there’s some nice quiet reading in store for real kung fu heads: this Arrow release comes with an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film critic Peter Glagowski.
RE/PLAY VALUE: The Prodigal Son might oscillate between broad Looney Tunes comedy (the sound effects are ridiculous!) and harrowing tragedy (the burning of the Peking opera is truly staggering), but you can feel the power emanating from Sammo Hung’s direction and the film’s dynamic performances. More than a masterful primer on the art of Wing Chun, this is top-tier kung fu filmmaking.
8.5/10
The Prodigal Son is available on Blu-ray now. For purchasing information, click this.
Directed by Sammo Hung.
Written by Sammo Hung and Barry Wong.
Cinematography by Ricky Lau.
Starring Yuen Biao, Lam Ching-ying, Frankie Chan, and Sammo Hung.
Produced by Raymond Chow.
Not rated. Includes whirlwind action choreography, wanton cartoon havoc, and some serious-time bloodshed for dramatic purposes.
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