Ninja Death (1987)

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Ninja Death (1987)

A nutty ninja flick full of every conceivable excitement: a cloaked baddie in a gold lamé headdress; a demonic sub-villain in a dragon mask who responds violently to flute music; springboard ninja spinning behind an array of colourful smoke bombs. You name it, this has it. The film also takes a fetishistic approach to naked flesh of both the female and male kind, but mostly male. Alexander Lo is not someone to squander the opportunity to take his shirt off and rub oil on his muscles. His bulging torso lunges back and forth towards the camera in strenuous scenes of …

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Profile: Darren Shahlavi

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Profile: Darren Shahlavi

Date of birth: August 5, 1972 (Stockport, Cheshire, UK)

Date of death: January 14, 2015 (aged 42), Los Angeles, US

Full name: Darren Majian Shahlavi

Occupation: Actor, stuntman

Style: Judo, Muay Thai, Karate, kickboxing

Biography: Darren Shahlavi was part of a generation of British martial arts actors who found success in both the Chinese and American film industries. He was born in Stockport, UK, to Iranian immigrant parents. He trained in judo from the age of seven and later studied kickboxing under Ronnie Green and Shorai Association Karate under Dave Morris. He later studied at Master Toddy’s Muay Thai Academy in Manchester. Shahlavi grew up …

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Kung Fu Dunk (2008)

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Kung Fu Dunk (2008)

Bizarre sports film greatly inspired by the comedies of Stephen Chow – most notably Shaolin Soccer – which embraces Chow’s leaning towards high-concept absurdity without any of the performer’s natural wit or levity. Eric Tsang is the film’s only bona fide comedic presence and the young cast struggle to rival his charisma. Tsang plays a down-and-out agent who spots the superior throwing skills of orphaned kung fu punchbag Jay Chou, so he finds him a place on a university basketball team. He becomes something of a teen idol and a target for gangsters, keen to exploit his good nature. This …

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Marked for Death (1990)

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Marked for Death (1990)

Not one of Seagal‘s better titles, although this one arrives at the violent height of his popularity. A Colombian drug bust goes awry when the cartel get wise to the undercover cops in their midst. The DEA’s finest, John Hatcher (Seagal plus ponytail), loses his partner when he’s shot by a stripper, so Hatcher turns in his badge as soon as he returns to Chicago. “I have become what I most despise,” he tells his priest, determined to live a quieter life with his nieces and nephews. About ten minutes later, a posse of Rastafarian drug dealers start pushing contraband …

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Dragons Forever (1988)

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Dragons Forever (1988)

The last and arguably finest collaboration between the Three Dragons (childhood buddies Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao). This is fundamentally a Jackie Chan vehicle besieged by the usual thrills and spills. Emphasis is firmly placed on the romantic and comedy aspects, with Jackie and Sammo handling the dramatics well with their suffering partners Pauline Yeung and Deanie Yip. But Yuen Biao steals the show as a hilariously neurotic burglar full of inane words of wisdom. Chan is a womanising lawyer who enlists the help of his brothers to investigate the women involved in his next case. Pauline Yeung’s fish …

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Kids from Shaolin (1984)

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Kids from Shaolin (1984)

Family rivalry besets the second Shaolin Temple film; another exercise in portraying China’s brightest wushu kids with a more knockabout comedy slant than the first film. The wild river and mountainous landscape are not the only things separating the Dragon and Phoenix families. A growing mistrust has developed between the two dynasties. The Dragons are a family of orphaned boys who are experts in the Shaolin styles of kung fu and weaponry. The Phoenix family are a female clan of Wu Tang sword fighters whose father longs for a male child to continue the family line. When a gang of …

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Project A Part II (1987)

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Project A Part II (1987)

This sequel is a barrage of colourful excitement. During the glorious finale, Jackie Chan falls down a bamboo scaffold, consumes red hot chili peppers, battles with ferocious gangsters and axe-wielding pirates. He then runs down a collapsing structure and narrowly avoids certain death in a magnificent stunt originally performed by Buster Keaton. This is Chan’s rollicking homage to his silent movie heroes. He confronts triad kingpins, revolutionaries, corrupt officials and the same pirates who survived the first film (unlike Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, who are nowhere to be seen). The production is grand with detailed sets and immaculate costumes. …

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Rosa (1986)

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Rosa (1986)

One of those dodgy 80s slapstick comedies from Hong Kong which plays more like a series of farcical sketches than a coherent narrative. The film boasts an early script by Wong Kar-wai, but this is about as far removed from the auteur’s oeuvre as you could imagine. Bumbling CID buddies Yuen Biao and Lowell Lo start double-dating Kara Hui and Luk Siu-fan, who plays a former gangster’s moll called Rosa with connections to high-powered jewel thieves James Tien, Dick Wei and Chung Fat. Producer Sammo Hung lends out his best people for the action scenes and, true to form, the …

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Dragon (2011)

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Dragon (2011)

Donnie Yen‘s post-Ip Man work is, on the whole, quite magnificent, and this is no exception. He unites with The Warlords director Peter Chan for an exuberant period piece set in a quiet, rural Chinese idyll in 1917. Yen is the simple, understated family man Jinxi who becomes a local hero after thwarting a violent robbery and killing the culprits. Kaneshiro plays the police inspector Xu who doesn’t buy Jinxi’s vulnerable story. In a clever sequence, Xu recalls the same fight sequence in forensic detail as the camera spirals through computer-generated images of blood vessels and internal organs, like something from CSI: …

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Island of Fire (1990)

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Island of Fire (1990)

Cool Hand Luke meets La Femme Nikita in this promising drama – a Hong Kong homage to the Hollywood prison movie capitalising on the heroic bloodshed films of the time. The all-star ensemble cast is enough to spark interest (all of which appear in a bid to help relaunch Wang Yu‘s film career), yet Island of Fire is a muddled film. Vengeful characters inhabit a tough HK prison somewhere in the near future. Tony Leung – the movie’s real star – is a policeman sent undercover to sniff out corruption. Sammo Hung keeps escaping to visit his young son. Wang …

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