Fong Sai Yuk

Corey Yuen, Hong Kong, 1993
3.5 out of 4 stars

Old kung fu films have a reputation in the US as being overly-corny, which is perhaps why all of the 21st century, internationally-targeted martial arts films are so deathly serious, perhaps overcompensating a bit with the gravity in order to pure associations with the perceived silliness of the older stuff. Meanwhile, most of Jet Li’s 1990s film output has been released in English-only, cut versions, with anything too “weird” or even worse, “foreign” being excised in order not to offend the aesthetic (?) sensibilities of the Western viewer.

With all that preamble, I guess the point is that I watched this early Jet Li film on the uncut, original language DVD (with less-than-perfect, but comprehensible English subtitles), and I really enjoyed it. I don’t want to indiscriminately label all films of this time period and genre as lost classics, because many of them are actually quite boring, others are indeed just too ridiculous, and still others are just hodgepodges, with no discernible unity to them. This film might seem to fall under the last category, as it starts with pure comedy and somewhat unexpectedly transitions to something a bit weightier (although not grim, by any means) about two-thirds of the way through. Although Jet Li had already played Wong Fei-hung and would soon get a little too stuck in his “goody goody” persona, at this point he is still willing to put on the happy go-lucky persona that I saw in Swordsman II, which I watched last year.

That said, Josephine Siao largely steals the show as the mother of Li’s titular character. Her manic energy and frantic delivery is always just one step shy of total overkill, but her performance is ultimately quite effective. What’s more, a surprising amount of pathos arises from a romantic plotline that, for fear of spoiling it, I won’t describe in detail here. Although much of the plot is rather slapstick, there is a certain element of Shakespearean comedy to the proceedings, perhaps paralleled by Chinese precedent as well. Finally, the fight scenes are quite good, not overly-dependent on special effects (as, surprisingly, some kung fu films of this time period are), but not too prosaic either, containing various interesting setpieces, such as one in which two characters fight while using the heads of the audience members as their platforms.

Source: Universe remastered DVD
7 February, 10:30 PM