No Surrender Cinema: Vanishing Son

Let’s go back to February of 1994. Owen Hart had just kicked his brother Bret’s leg out from under his leg. My hero Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski were still a few months away from getting married in Las Vegas. Freshman year of high school hadn’t even started, and I was spending my Friday nights setting the VCR to record TGIF while I was out on dates. It was also that month when something caught my eye that wasn’t a member of the opposite sex; it was a new martial arts movie. Even better, it wasn’t one that I had to hit up the video store for or wait to catch on cable…this one was going to be on network TV! I think it’s about time I spent some time using No Surrender Cinema to talk about a martial arts franchise that has seemingly vanished from people’s minds, the aptly named Vanishing Son.

On February 28th, 1994, Vanishing Son (aka Vanishing Son I) premiered as part of the Universal Action Pack, a programming block that aired a rotation of action and adventure series. Since it’s debut in January of that year, the Action Pack had already aired TekWar (a sci-fi action series starring William Shatner, who conceptualized the stories it was based on), as well as TV movie spinoffs of two hit films, Smokey and the Bandit and Midnight Run. Vanishing Son was the first original program for the block, meaning that it had no prior media to be inspired by. It tells the story of Jian-Wa and Wago, the Chang brothers, who live in China with their father. The older brother, Jian-Wa (Russell Wong, Romeo Must Die), is an accomplished violinist and martial artist, while younger brother Wago (Chi Muoi Lo) is more impulsive and stubborn. The brothers find themselves needing to flee China after a protest turns violent and both Jian-Wa and Wago fight off soldiers. Their father, fearing the retaliation of the Secret Police, advises them to get out of the country, which they are able to do when they are smuggled in on a fishing boat. Immigration agents seize the boat and find the brothers, which lands them in a prison cell with a group of racist assholes who soon find out that the two brothers aren’t the pushovers that they look like. This scene has been burned into my brain since I first saw it, because who can forget watching someone get their head kicked so hard their head ends up stuck between the bars of the jail cell? Luckily for the brothers the fight doesn’t get them into any further trouble, since the agent who brought them in comes across their picture (from the protest) in TIME magazine. The brothers are given asylum, and when they are released, seek out Fu Qua Johnson (Marcus S. Chong, adopted son of Tommy Chong), a man they met while they were in jail. Fu Qua offers the brothers work when they get out, but a visit to his restaurant reveals that he’s into some shady dealings. You would think the Chang brothers would have realized a guy they met in a prison cell might not be on the up and up.

Getting good work in America isn’t easy, as the brothers deal with low level work, wages being stolen, and racism at nearly every turn. The way that nearly every character that the Chang brothers come into contact with demeans them with racial remarks reminded me a lot of what Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s character faced in Bloodfst III: Forced To Fight. Luckily for Jian-Wa, not everyone is a shady asshole or a racist; as he resumes practicing music he meets a beautiful cellist (90’s it girl Rebecca Gayheart) who becomes smitten with the handsome violinist and ends up dumping her douchebag fiancée to shack up with Jian-Wa. As Jian-Wa is falling in love, his brother Wago is falling deeper into a life of crime. Wago has become enamored with the gangster lifestyle and becomes a part of Fu Qua’s gang, cementing himself as Fu Qua’s new right hand man after Wago dispatches members of a rival gang with ease and saves Fu Qua’s life. The two Chang brothers, who sought a better life together, could now not be further apart. Showing just how different they’ve become, the two brothers battle each other in a fight that goes from their small apartment, throughout the building, and out into the street. With neither brother willing to bend, Wago pleads with Jian-Wa to let him go and accept the fact that this is the path he’s chosen. Jian-Wa reluctantly does so, torn between protecting his brother and trying to keep his own head above water.

Vanishing Son plays with a lot of non-action elements; romance, brotherhood, hope, and most of all, oppression. In fact, Vanishing Son doesn’t even have a “big bad” for the brothers to conquer. Rather than have a third party due something so drastic it brings Jian-Wa and Wago back together for the greater good, the climactic fight scene in Vanishing Son has Jian-Wa coming to the rescue when Fu Qua’s place of business comes under attack by a rival gang. Instead of a devious criminal figure, the “big bad” of the film is everything that stands in the brothers’ way of achieving the American Dream. For Jian-Wa, that just might be his own brother, and for Wago, as we see him slowly devolve into a common thug, it just might be himself.

So few remember Vanishing Son that many don’t even realize this film kicked off a franchise that included three more TV movies and a television series that ran for one season consisting of 13 episodes. I know that as a teenager that even though I could get my martial arts fix from cable and the video store, I was still excited to see more content like this hitting the airwaves and I was disappointed when it left the air. In fact, once the TV series was canceled in the spring of 1995, Vanishing Son lived up to its name by disappearing from television for years. Over the past few decades the show has popped up on YouTube (where you can currently watch all four movies and every episode), has previously been on Tubi, and was even replayed on the Starz/Encore series of cable channels in all of their uncut glory for several years until they were last aired about four years ago. It’s also funny that it’s not talked about more, since a host of notable Hollywood names have been involved with the show. Rob Cohen had directed Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story before he created Vanishing Son, and would go on to direct The Fast and the Furious and XXX, among other films. Both Yuji Okumoto and Tamlyn Tomita from The Karate Kid franchise would appear, as would other familiar faces like Dustin Nguyen, Ming-Na Wen, Dean Stockwell, Jamie Walters, and Matthew Lillard. That’s a pretty strong list of “who’s who” actors and actresses for an syndicated 90’s action show that only stuck around for a year.

I had fun revisiting Vanishing Son, and was happy to see that someone put a playlist of the entire franchise together for easy viewing on YouTube. As time goes on I’m sure I’ll find myself making my way back through the rest of the films and the episodes, so here’s your advanced notice to catch up on them while you can so that you’ll be ready for the eventual No Surrender Cinema columns that cover them!