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From Jet Li in The One to Jackie Chan in Police Story, eight favourite martial arts stories
- From Cheng Pei-pei and Gordon Liu to Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li, a galaxy of stars have appeared in Hong Kong martial arts movies
- Wong Kar-wai brought an elegiac feel to The Grandmaster, pitting Tony Leung Chiu-wai against Zhang Ziyi. Then there was surprise package Cynthia Rothrock
Reading Time:4 minutes
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It’s the second birthday of the Post’s weekly Hong Kong martial arts film feature. To mark the occasion, we look back at some of the movies and stars we’ve enjoyed writing about over the past year.
Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster (2013)
An elegant and elegiac take on the kung fu genre, Wong Kar-wai’s delicate masterpiece combines martial arts history and romance to form a beguiling whole.
The Grandmaster uses Ip Man (played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai) to demonstrate the rivalry between the northern and southern schools of martial arts, and to depict the arrival of mainland Chinese martial arts masters in Hong Kong following the Japanese invasion of China.
Wong is relatively true to the different martial arts styles he shows, and the performances of Tony Leung, and Zhang Ziyi as his rival and heart’s desire, are precise and accurate, an achievement considering that Zhang has no formal martial arts training and Leung had only taken lessons in wing chun kung fu for a year. Read the full story
Sammo Hung in Martial Law (1998)
Sammo Hung Kam-bo didn’t play much of a part in the local martial arts revival of the early 1990s, but he did become a star in the US later in the decade due to the success of the CBS TV series Martial Law (1998), which ran for 44 episodes.
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Co-produced by Hong Kong’s Stanley Tong, the show was a big hit with American audiences due to the quality of the martial arts scenes, which resembled the fights in Hong Kong films.
The secret of Martial Law’s success was simple – the combat scenes were choreographed independently by two Hong Kong teams, and were cut together by a Hong Kong editor skilled in martial arts montage. “I enjoyed making the show,” Hung said, “they had a big budget and I was comfortable.” Read the full story
Cheng Pei-pei in Come Drink with Me (1966)
In the late 1960s Cheng Pei-pei was known as the “Queen of Swords” in Hong Kong, and was probably the city’s most famous female superstar. Even today, her combat scenes in films like the King Hu classic Come Drink With Me are unique, showing a fluidity that comes from her training in dance.
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