Charles Han Yong-Cheol starred in 12 movies, 9 in 1974. I managed to find four of his movies and will review them all here. I consider him as South Korea's answer to the next Bruce Lee. As a hard core fan of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984 I never heard of him until recently. When I think South Korean martial arts movies of that time it is the great Hwang Kang Lee I think about first. Hwang Jang Lee did have stunt man roles in most of Charles' movies.
My copy is a digital file that plays on a HDTV in 4:3 format. The dialog is Korean and I do not speak it. The video quality looks like an old VHS tape with some tracking problems and other blurriness but still watchable. Unfortunately the blur gets worse at the end during the final fights.
It opens with a short guy in a white suit gets off a ship. He fights off the gangsters waiting for him. I can usually figure out the story without the dialog but not with this movie. I'll focus my review on just the fighting.
The fights are few in the first half of the movie but the quantity improves toward the end. The fights are mostly hand to hand, street fighting style, and with plenty of kicks. There are no special weapons but props such a shovel or table leg are picked up and improvised as weapons. There are no memorable moves or special moments at all in the fight sequences. Overall it would be a stretch to rate the action in this movie as average. I will be kind and rate it as such but I do not recommend it for fans of the genre.
