Outside the Law (2002)

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Outside the Law (2002)

Great Rothrock vehicle which plays to her dramatic strengths and features some of her best acting. She’s a grieving, emotionally detached secret agent whose future hubby is iced during a botched assignment at the hands of a Colombian drug cartel. With the feds on her case, she adopts a fiery redhead look and escapes to rural Florida to start over, only to find trouble in paradise when she befriends the brother of a girl killed by a local drug dealer (played by Jeff Wincott, who was also something of a martial arts video star in the 90s). Veteran martial arts …

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The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967)

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The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967)

A feisty, swinging 60s crime film from Hong Kong, the inspiration for the John Woo classic A Better Tomorrow. Patrick Tse plays a cool safe cracker struggling to readjust to civilian life after 15 years in the slammer. He finds salvation in the form of Ms. Mak (Patsy Ka Ling) and her probationary school – a half way house for waifs and strays. But his criminal background has not gone unnoticed by the evil One-Eye Jack (the brilliant Shek Kin on full pantomime mode) who sets about destroying his life until he accepts his place among the underworld.

The film seems …

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The Story of Wong Fei-hung Volume 1: The Whip that Smacks the Candle (1949)

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The Story of Wong Fei-hung Volume 1: The Whip that Smacks the Candle (1949)

The long-running series of black and white Wong Fei-hung films starts here; perhaps the first traditional kung fu movies in terms of genuine martial arts study and focus, in contrast to the fantasy-led, swashbuckling wuxia films of Shanghai’s silent era.

The film immediately assumes the notion of sifu Wong as an established Foshan legend, a folk hero known as a good and virtuous man who defends the poor, heals the weak and highlights social injustice. Prone to philosophical bouts of Confucian morality, he advocates diplomacy and only ever shows his skills as a great kung fu master when provoked; a practitioner …

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Wolverine’s past is riddled with grief, conflict and insecurity. Born a 19th century mutant boy named Jimmy with extendable blades protruding from his knuckles, he kills his real father when he loses his temper and winds up living the next 100 years or so with his insane brother Victor (who has opposing extendable finger nails) fighting in a load of wars.

They’re recruited by nutty colonel Stryker to form a “special team” of mutants (they’re always forming special teams in X-Men movies) to act as a Dirty Dozen-style mercenary gang on a quest to find the strongest stuff in the universe, …

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Interview: Leon Hunt

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Interview: Leon Hunt

In 2003, Leon Hunt published Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger, his definitive study on a much maligned film genre. Over a decade later and the ‘cult’ surrounding the kung fu film has infiltrated the multiplex. The digital age has created unlikely action heroes from animated pandas to mainstream superheroes. So what’s next for the kung fu film? We chat to the film scholar ahead of his BFI lecture on the transnational success of the Chinese martial arts film.

As part of their A Century of Chinese Cinema season, the British Film Institute (BFI) has prepared a special tribute …

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Red Heroine (1929)

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Red Heroine (1929)

Between 1927 and 1931, around 400 silent martial arts films were made in Shanghai. This is the only one that remains. As a result, there is a distinct possibility this may be the oldest surviving martial arts film in existence. It’s a spirited wuxia revenge film, the sixth episode in a wildly popular 13-part serial known as Red Knight-Errant which featured the swashbuckling, high-flying exploits of the Red Heroine, cinema’s first femme fatale. Played with great verve by Fan Xuepeng, she is kidnapped by a marauding flag-waving militia and forced to become a semi-naked sex slave for the troop’s kung …

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X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

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X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

With Bryan Singer’s absence, Brett Rush Hour Ratner steers this exciting franchise off course. The film promises much but delivers a flat script and a succession of disappointing conclusions. In supposedly the last X-Men adventure, a cure has been discovered in a child that can stop the mutant genome. This poses a threat to Magneto’s quest for worldwide domination and Professor X’s pupils who see the cure as the antidote to all their hormonal problems. Jean Grey returns from the dead, now with upgrades which make her the most destructive force on the planet. She kills off the Professor (far …

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X2 (2003)

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X2 (2003)

This X-Men sequel kicks off with an assassination attempt on the US President. A blue-skinned teleporter high kicks his way through the walls and ceilings of the White House only to be denied at the last hurdle. The near-miss causes the President to take evasive action against all mutants. This escalates into a full scale military take over of Professor Xavier’s School for the Exceptionally Gifted, and the X-Men are turfed out into the wilderness. The man behind the President’s attack is a twisted anti-mutant general whose lair under a giant dam is home to mutant experiments and evil schemes …

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X-Men (2000)

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X-Men (2000)

An exciting fantasy film based on the popular Marvel comic books and its subsequent cartoon spin off. Aficionados may cast a critical eye over this big budget adaptation but for the most part it is loud, zany, kick ass fun. The movie is set in the not-too-distant future in which a race of highly evolved mutants have become the centre of public scrutiny. There are those mutants who want mankind destroyed, and those who want to see mutants and humans living in harmony.

First of all, we have the bad mutants. These are led by Magneto (McKellen), a telekinetic scholar, who …

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Dragon Fight (1989)

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Dragon Fight (1989)

A great 80s Jet Li curiosity with chunky mobile phones, big jackets and synthesised mood music. Filmed in San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge is crow-barred into nearly every shot) but produced the Hong Kong way – with delirious kung fu action sitting alongside broad comedic moments – the film not only features the future Mrs Jet, Nina Li Chi, but also an early supporting role for HK’s future king of comedy, Stephen Chow, whose charisma just about carries the middle part of the film.

Jet Li and Dick Wei play Jimmy and Tiger, childhood buddies on a tour of America …

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