Bullet Points: Kung Fu Warrior

I am a sucker for a bargain bin DVD collection of martial arts movies. Recently I picked up a 12 movie set called “The Great Impersonators” due to the fact that many of the movies in this collection starred the likes of Bruce Li, Dragon Lee, Bruce Le and Bruce Leung.

But not all twelve movies in the set featured one of the Bruce clones, a few other random martial arts movies were thrown in for good measure, like 1980’s Kung Fu Warrior…

• Holy Macau: Chang Lei (The Black Dragon’s Revenge) plays Yung the skateboarding protagonist. Yung’s skateboarding skill are on display during the opening credits as Yung skateboards to work. Yung is a bartender with some flashy moves (years before Bryan Brown and Tom Cruise in Cocktail) but not everyone at the bar is impressed with Yung. After drinking a bunch of beer, the head rabble rouser (wearing a sombrero) stands up and starts yelling, and telling everyone they need to leave the bar immediately… he then goes up to the bar with his two buddies flanking him and orders some white wine… when Yung tells him they are all out of white wine things start to get physical. Yung breaks a bottle resulting in a sliced up sombrero brim and some angrier goons. Eventually Yung’s manager comes out of her office after hearing all the commotion, she fires Yung and then the three troublemakers tape Yung’s feet to his skateboard and send him on his way.

• A Bird in a Cage is Worth Yung in the Bush: The next day Yung finds himself in the bushes… I am not exactly sure why, but I do know he is fixated on old man Chao (Kuan Hai Shan, Bruce Le’s Greatest Revenge) who is relaxing in the park with his pet bird and using his Kung Fu skills, superior balance and exceptional hearing to feed his hungry pet bird. These are the same skills Chao will use when the three guys who cost Yung his bartender gig, show up in the park and start messing with Chao. These guys are like Facebook trolls in real life, instead of going from post to post looking to start keyboard fights, they walk around Macau and randomly pick actual fights. After Chao thoroughly schools the terrible trio he notices Yung hiding in the bushes. Chao picks Yung up by the britches using his cane and starts to question the young man. Yung assures Chao he was not with the other guys and then asks Chao to teach him his unique style of Kung Fu, Chao tells him to look him up if he’s ever in Hong Kong…
• Business is About to Pick Up: Yung does make his way to Hong Kong and is wandering the streets when he comes across a street performer doing feats of strength as a way to promote the vitamins he is hawking. Desperate for a teacher, Yung sees this guy as a possibility and offers him his last $200, the guy takes it because he is a grifter and incorporates Yung into his act with disastrous results. Now Yung has no money, no job and nobody to teach him Kung Fu, but he does find a girl named Jenny that he is interested while skateboarding. But things are about to get even better after Yung applies for an open “office boy” job. As luck would have it, the hiring manager for the position is none other than Chao! Now Yung has a girl, a job and a Kung Fu teacher!
• Money (That’s What I Want): Things may be looking up for Yung, but Chao runs into some trouble after talking to his daughter Jenny (yep the SAME Jenny, although Chao is oblivious that his daughter is dating Yung and Yung is oblivious to the fact that his girlfriend is Chao’s daughter). Jenny tells her father that she wants to study abroad, but studying abroad is not cheap. All in it is going to cost $60,000 to send Jenny off to school, but Chao doesn’t have $60,000. So he goes to his boss, Mr. Cheng and asks if he can borrow the money, but Cheng shoots him down since Chao has no collateral. And that’s when the wheels start turning in Chao’s head because he knows Mr. Cheng has vest made of money. When Chao tells Yung about this, Yung’s wheels start turning too (they still don’t realize that they are both trying to get money for the same person) and after a stop at Radio Shack (#DatedReference), Yung hatches a plan to get the vest from Mr. Cheng using a walkie talkie and a remote control helicopter. And strangely enough the plan almost works… that is until the remote control helicopter drops the vest before it can make its way to Yung and Cheng sends Chao and the rest of his men to go look for the vest. Fortunately Chao finds it before any of Cheng’s other employees and he stashes it in a warehouse for safekeeping until it can be retrieved later.

• Best Little Warehouse in Hong Kong: Yung goes to the warehouse to retrieve the money vest… but it isn’t going to be easy. Yung rips open a bag looking for the vest and the first of five henchmen make their presence known. Yung ends up running the gauntlet against all five henchmen, dispatching with each of them in entertaining fashion. This series of fight scenes in the warehouse were the most entertaining scenes in the entire movie, but it ends up being all for not… Yung never finds the money vest in the warehouse. Did the henchmen get the vest before Yung got there? Did Chao never stash the vest there to begin with? And even if Chao and/or Yung manage to get the vest, what is Jenny going to think about these ill gotten gains?

I am not sure I can properly convey in words exactly what I was expecting when I started watching Kung Fu Warrior, but it certainly wasn’t a tale about two protagonists, who for all intents and purposes, rob a guy just because he’s not willing to loan one of them money. Cheng is just a businessman with a unique flair for fashion, which makes him a less than stellar villain, which means Yung and Chao are less than stellar heroes, making Kung Fu Warrior a less than stellar movie.

Here are some stellar Bonus Bullet Points to wrap things up…

• Training Sequence: I was hoping for a montage once Chao takes on Yung as a student, but no such luck. There is a long training sequence however with Yung on a swinging platform that is being moved by ropes being pulled by Chao, all while Yung has to balance three “bowls of fire” on various parts of his anatomy.
• Name That Tune: Much like in Bruce Strikes Back, Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” is used without permission in Kung Fu Warrior.
• Produced By: Kung Fu Warrior was produced by Goldig Films. Other Goldig productions included the super bizarre The Dragon Lives Again starring Bruce Leung, Kung Fu Genius starring Cliff Lok and one of my personal favorites, The Gold Connection aka Iron Dragon Strikes Back starring Bruce Li and featuring an unforgettable scene in a quarry.