The Hammer of God

The late, great Jimmy Wang Yu wrote, directed, and starred in this martial arts classic with an appreciably simple, straightforward story. A swaggering heel named Diao Erh-yeh (Hsiung Chao) comes to a school of Chinese boxing to throw his weight around. But the wise teacher (Mien Fang) sends him packing. Soon, the villain has returned with brutal karate fighters from Japan, and they slaughter almost everybody in the school. But our hero survives, and spends time recuperating and training for what he knows is going to be a tough quest for revenge.

This viewer would agree that "The Chinese Boxer" only gets better as it goes along. The fighting is top-notch, of course, and the film has a definite energy and flow to it. It's also quite amusingly violent, with a lot of bright red movie blood oozing from various mortal wounds. Our hero, Lei Ming, is a calm, steady, soft-spoken type, and the villains are absolutely classic in their unsubtle nastiness. (To add insult to injury, Diao Erh-yeh takes over the whole town, turning it into a hotbed of corruption.) Best of all is when the climactic action is taken outside, and our opponents start tangling in the snowy wilderness. But the training scenes are also as cool as can be, as Lei Ming learns to practice "weightlessness" and creates "hands of iron". Interestingly, in this saga, karate is portrayed in a largely negative way, with the teacher explaining the difference between karate and Chinese boxing to his students.

The music is good, the widescreen photography excellent, and the cast solid; this viewer did watch the English-language version, but the dubbing really didn't bother him that much. Overall, this is quite engaging, and clearly influenced later films such as Quentin Tarantinos' "Kill Bill" saga.

Eight out of 10.

The Chinese Boxer, unsurprisingly bears some similarity to Jimmy Wang Yu's other popular franchises- The One Armed Swordsman and the One Armed Boxer. This time Jimmy takes on the baddies with both arms. It's a simple morality play, he's good, they're bad and after inflicting pain upon him, his family and his village, they're going to have to pay. What makes it so damn entertaining, is the style, and dare I say it, the passion that has gone into it. Ignore the bad dubbing (the Australian version has an atrocious British accented soundtrack) the panning and acanning, and sit back and enjoy a true classic of HK cinema. You'll also enjoy learning traditional Chinese medicine and philospohy in the manner with which it was intended. Take note of the traditional themes of Chinese cinema- Honour, family values, retribution. Listen for the quick sample of one of John Barry's Bond themes in some of the action sequences.

The most important fact about this movie: A Shaw Brothers movie written by, directed by, and starring Jimmy Wang Yu. That was the first and last time that ever happened.

It starts on a busy street in a small Chinese town. I think Shaw Brothers was just showing off that they could put together a throw away scene with hundreds of extras wandering a complete small town. So it really starts when our villain enters a kung fu school and criticizes them. He is a former student, kicked out for violence, and now a student of Japanese martial arts. Challenge accepted! He fights them but his moves do not resemble karate. During the opening credits one student runs, it seems to be about ten miles, to notify the master. He arrives first at a rock quarry where Jimmy Wang Yu and Cheng Lui seem to be working like slaves. They rush back to the school. Karate guy is now using judo. After introductions and rudeness the teacher arrives. They fight and teacher draws first blood. Karate/Judo guy vows to return with karate experts.

Cut to Jimmy Wang Yu walking and talking with his girl. She predicts a bad ending to all this karate versus kung fu business. Back at the school the master bores everyone with a lecture on the history of martial arts. Two important points are- the Chinese take credit as the originators of all martial arts and the Iron Palm and Light Leaping techniques can defeat karate. Remember that, there will be a one question test at the end of the movie. "How do you defeat karate?"

What follows is then the first training sequence. Jimmy engaged in many exercises to show the physical demands required to gain martial arts proficiency. In reality this is a redundant and mind numbing process so the movies had to make it look more interesting.

Lo Lieh plays an absolute bad guy in this movie. He is one of the few leading men who had real martial arts experience before he started acting. His career began with hero roles but subsequently turned to villains. He is probably better remembered as a villain. His background was in karate so was a perfect fit for this role. Chan Sing is another villain in this movie. He also has a background in Goju-Ryu karate. I am unable to verify of this is before, after, or during his acting career. He fights Jimmy at about 30 minutes into the movie and most of the fight choreography is actually karate for the first time in this movie. He takes out Jimmy with a hit to the forehead.

This movie has my highest recommendation which is underwhelming because it is a landmark film that had social and cultural influence beyond the movie world and is mandatory viewing for any fan of this genre.

Just watched it on Prime Video. At a time when Jimmy Wang-Yu, David Chiang, Ti Lung and Lo Lieh were superstars, tons of more or less similar movies were made based on more or less the same plot, with two arms, one arm, two fists, one fist, one guillotine and so on... This one is another vehicle of the superstar of that beloved era. You got some dude and in particular our hero, pupils in a kung-fu school, that is threatened by bad guys. Japanese bad guys, yeah!

What happens next leaves no place for surprise but let's admit it: it's still fun and efficient.

The cinematography, as usual for a Shaw Brothers, is beautiful, with nice snow, beautiful scenery, cool casinos... The thing is there are some flaws. When Jackie Chan seeks revenge, he finds a funny old master to train with and it occupies the second act almost entirely. Here, Jimmy's training is on his own, and lasts for way too short. It looks too easy.

Anyway, what bothers me the most, is I can't stop thinking about the uber-superstar that will shatter the world a couple years later. No wonder, sadly or not, that all the superstars of that time were sent to the closet.

Jimmy hadly can rise his legs very high. His blows don't look very powerful. He is more like a dancer rather than an invicible fighter.

Don't misunderstand me, he likes him very much and his fellows as well.

Trouble is, well, there is a unbeatable master who is the only one martial artist in history. Jimmy, here, looks like an artist only. A very good one though, capable of the best, see for instance GOD OF WAR:

The Chinese Boxer is typical of Chinese propaganda about the Japanese. Chinese boxing is for sport, Karate is for killing, and boy do they kill. Eye gouging and rape in an action-packed fist-fest. A chinese man returns to challenge the kung fu master who threw him out of town with his new found Judo skills. His defeat leads to calling on Japanese Karate experts, and on it goes from there. Our hero's entire school is wiped out, leaving him to seek revenge by learning new techniques.... you get the idea. The town becomes an excuse for the local gambling den. The final fight seen involves some nice sword play. An ok flick, could have done without the rape scene, which isn't too explicit, but still...