Kung Fu Zombie (1982)

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Kung Fu Zombie (1982)

A delirious kung fu film which cashes in on the crop of supernatural pictures being made at the time and moves so quickly that most of it makes very little sense. But then again, the film features crazy vampire assassins with flaming hands and disfigured corpses possessing people’s souls, so it more than compensates. A sprightly Billy Chong plays the unlucky victim of a Taoist priest with a barrage of spells, and the boy is forced to fight a pair of top bastards. First there’s Kwan Yung-moon, a twice reborn assassin, and then he must face his own possessed father, …

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Mortal Kombat (1995)

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Mortal Kombat (1995)

Perhaps the best movie adaptation of a popular video game (compared to absolute stinkers like Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter), not only does Paul Anderson’s action-packed adventure satisfy hardened computer nerds but also the martial arts aficionado. It’s one of the best American fight films of the 90s. A hammy fantasy with harmless cartoon violence, the story focuses on the plight of the human race as they do battle in a surreal kung fu tournament on Outworld, run by an evil emperor and his sorcerer minion, Shang Tsung (the wonderfully dramatic Tagawa). They have plans to possess the Earth, …

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The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

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The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

For hardcore flag-waving kung fu fans, a film starring two of the world’s most popular martial arts movie icons – Jackie Chan and Jet Li – was an almost unthinkable prospect. Shame, then, that the resulting film which finally unites them is a bit, well, forgettable.

For performers who mix in similar circles, there is still a lot to differentiate the two. Chan’s slapstick approach to fighting aligned itself much closer to the silent era stars of early Hollywood. Yet in the 90s, Jet Li would carve out a career as the epitome of the patriotic, noble folk hero with much …

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The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

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The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Roger Moore’s second outing as James Bond takes a whistle-stop tour of Southeast Asia, from Macau through Hong Kong to Thailand and concluding in China. Director Hamilton uses his resources wisely and conjures up a great bag of tricks, including a stunning car chase in Bangkok, a strange circus-themed horror show in Scaramanga’s lair and, towards the end, a flying car. The film nestles into a kung fu section when Bond wakes up in a hastily assembled dojo to witness a few demos from Filipino knife fighters and a karate expert, before scrapping with one of the Chinese extras. As …

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Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

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Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

Desperate sequel which trades the original film‘s flare, fun and heart for broader brushstrokes of crude humour and gratuitous violence – something which angered the film’s co-star Jim Carrey enough to openly distance himself from the project. Where the first film excelled at humanising the superhero fable for teen audiences – as well as providing genuine shocks in the form of potty-mouthed assassin Hit Girl – this brash and ugly sequel settles on a more confused narrative and gets its kicks from grisly cop killings and projectile vomiting.

Based on two comic books, the different stories never quite coalesce comfortably. On …

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Blood and Bone (2009)

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Blood and Bone (2009)

After a varied and not unremarkable career, Michael Jai White’s transition to B movie hero has helped turn a number of humdrum potboilers into real gems. His natural calm and light touch can elevate the most tired of stories. This illegal street fighting film does little to deviate from the formula and is a box ticking exercise in redemption. But it’s fast and slick, at times quite funny and sensitive, with good fight scenes.

White plays ex-con Bone (see what they did there?) as a sensitive chess-playing beefcake with a body like a sack of walnuts and an arsenal of karate …

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You Only Live Twice (1967)

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You Only Live Twice (1967)

The first Bond film to use unarmed combat as one of its central themes (more specifically, martial arts of Japanese origin), this was officially Connery’s penultimate outing as 007 and possibly his best – or at least a close second to Goldfinger.

Bond fakes his own death on the behalf of MI6 to travel incognito to Japan and investigate a spate of recent space-jackings where manned rockets are being stolen from outside the earth’s atmosphere. The Americans are blaming the Russians as the space race heats up, but the real culprit is bald cat-loving menace Blofeld and his consortium of shit-stirring …

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Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)

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Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)

Essentially a repeat of the first film substituting a battleship for a train, for the most part this routine thriller barrels along agreeably, albeit forever chasing the coattails of its predecessor. A sleeper train running through the USA is hijacked by a band of mercenaries and a psychotic sacked ex-military boffin who masterminds an outlandish scheme to take his revenge on the world. He takes control of a top-secret photon beam laser weapon in space and aims it at Washington, D.C., turning the train into his own private war room and holding all the passengers hostage. Unfortunately for him, ex-Navy …

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Fatal Contact (2006)

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Fatal Contact (2006)

Dennis Law’s third film as writer-director is a slow and sombre tome which only kicks into gear when the fists start flying. The basic illegal underground boxing premise is as old as the movies themselves and offers nothing new to throw the cliches off course (at one point the central character is even told to throw a fight). Aside from the film’s plodding nature and dumb predictability, there is precious little substance to support the story’s other main topics of displacement and poverty, to say nothing of the film’s comic book approach to Hong Kong gambling culture.

The film centres on …

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One-Armed Swordsman (1967)

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One-Armed Swordsman (1967)

Seminal Shaw Brothers hit which sees director Chang Cheh lay his blood-red slasher stamp on Japanese cinematic tropes and launch an iconic Chinese hero in the process. The overarching image of the one armed servant’s son Fang Gang – slicing up Imperialist kung fu scumbags with his sawed-off broadsword – is as resonant an image of cult Hong Kong action cinema as Lone Wolf and Cub is in Japan, or Captain America in the US. Former polo champion Jimmy Wang Yu steps up to leading man duties to play the innocent young hero, a role he would continue to milk …

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