New Fist of Fury

This is the first film for Jackie as a new Kung-Fu star after the miss of Bruce Lee. Jackie has kept being very popular in Japan since late 70's. When I was a kid,I saw the picture of original Hong Kong made poster of this and dreamed to see this film in the theatre someday -- because this is "part-2" of that Bruce Lee's masterpiece, and the director was Lo-Wei, the same guy who directed original Fist of Fury!!!!...But this one has never shown in Japanese movie theatre at all. Some of Jackie's Kung-Fu films in 70's are so shabby, they are almost garbages (Mostly because of Lo-Wei).But Jackie's Kung-Fu actions in this one is one of the best in his 70's. But if you are Bruce Lee fan and will see this as "Part-2" of his masterpiece "FIST OF FURY", DON'T TOUCH THIS!! Maybe you will be mad and burn this video.

First I will say that, yes I did enjoy Bruce Lee's "Fist of Fury", but I also enjoyed this pseudo-sequel as well. There wasn't all that much reference back to the first movie if you look at it, sure Chen Zhen was mentioned, as was Jing Wu, but beyond that, then there wasn't all that much reference. And I found that "New Fist of Fury" was actually an adequate movie in itself. Watch it for what it is, a Kung Fu movie meant for entertaining.

The story is fairly simple, a young man living as a thief comes to be forced into learning Kung Fu at the Jing Wu academy during the time when Taiwan was occupied by Japanese troops. And this young man embodies the Taiwanese spirit and fights for an independent Taiwan, standing up to the Japenese occupational force.

Bear in mind that this is an early Jackie Chan movie, and it was before all the slapstick comedy became his trademark, so this is a more serious Kung Fu movie compared to most other of his movies. Being a movie from 1976, you of course have the odd sound effects during the Kung Fu scenes and fairly questionable acting compared to today's standards.

There was a good amount of nice fighting throughout the movie, however I think the last showdown, the climax of the movie, was actually a little bit too much drawn out, taking a bit too long to finish. And then the scene when the movie ends was rather anti-climatic.

The movie in itself is a well worthy addition to any Jackie Chan fan's DVD collection, especially because it is outside of the usual slapstick comedy genre of Kung Fu.

The first of several movies directed by Lo Wei to feature up 'n' coming martial arts star Jackie Chan, New Fist of Fury was devised as a sequel to Bruce Lee's popular film Fist of Fury (which was also directed by Wei).

Chan plays Lung, a layabout thief in Japanese-occupied Taiwan who hates the Japs and enjoys a brawl, but has no interest in learning kung fu, meaning that he regularly gets his ass handed to him by his opponents.

After being discovered left for dead in a ditch after one particularly severe beating, Lung is nursed back to health by the students of a local kung fu school run by kindly Master Su and his pretty grand-daughter, Miss Lee (Nora Miao). Lung is invited to train at the school but refuses, unwilling to give up his freedom as a thief.

However, when Akumora (Chan Sing), the local Japanese official, takes his bully boy tactics too far, eventually causing the death of Master Su, Lung has a change of heart, becomes a highly skilled martial artist overnight (or so it seems) and kicks some major Japanese butt (before being shot to death in the film's closing frames!!!).

With the star spending most of this film as a punching bag for his enemies, and very little evidence of the innovative slapstick comedy/fight action that one generally associates with his later movies, New Fist of Fury is bound to disappoint many Chan fans. Unless you are a rabid fan of JC and wish to see all of his early work, you would probably be better off giving this one a miss (or watch either the Bruce Lee original, or the excellent Jet Li version of the story, Fist of Legend).

After co-starring in Hand of Death, Jackie Chan was forced into an early retirement because of the shift in consumer tastes in movies. The Hong Kong audience was dissatisfied with the action films after the death of Bruce Lee, leaving an ever-widening amount of unemployed stunt-men and bit-players. Since Jackie was one of these casualties he retired to Australia to be with his family. There he did construction in the day and worked in a Chinese restaurant at night. Then he received a telegram from Willie Chan wanting him to work in a new film called New Fist of Fury – a sequel to the beloved Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury. He told him that the movie would be for the newly formed Lo Wei Productions and that the film would be directed by Lo Wei himself. Jackie would receive 3000 Dollars (HK) per month for acting (he would later receive 9000 for being the stunt coordinator.) Little did anyone know that this unknown actor would become a big boon to the industry; though, this would not happen for a while and would not happen (directly) because of this film.

New Fist of Fury is typical of a Lo Wei film, it lacks cohesion and character with an overuse of plot elements. The film starts after the destruction of the Ching Wu School in Shanghai. The remnants of the school, led by the delightful Miss Lee (Nora Miao), are forced to flee to Taiwan to avoid persecution from the Japanese. She will stay with her grandfather Su Onli who is the head of a martial arts school. Unfortunately, the Japanese are ubiquitous in Taiwan too. When her group arrives, they are the target of a thief Helong (Jackie Chan) and his companion Old Chin (Hon Siu). Helong (Ah Lung in some translations) steals a wooden box containing the prize weapon of the late Brother Chen (Bruce Lee in the superior Fist of Fury) – nun-chucks.

Later, after Helong is found in a ditch beaten half-to-death by the students of Chin Ching Kai, he is found by Miss Lee's group and is nursed back to health (with the help of his prostitute mother's money, whom he does not know.) For all of this help and their forgiveness of him stealing their property, he refuses to learn Kung Fu so he can continuously be beaten up. Miss Lee has bigger problems than trying to get Helong to learn Kung Fu – the Japanese occupancy.

Akumora (played by the muscular Chan Sing) is the Japanese provincial leader who wants to combine the Chinese martial art schools under his Di Wah school. There is a great scene with him catching a knife in his teeth and then throwing it from his mouth killing an attacker. It is so hard to take this scene seriously, but it reminded me what Ed Wood might have done if he directed a Kung Fu film. Akumora is an interesting character that starts off semi-decent and then ends up completely anti-Chinese ("I kill Chinese, just like I kill dogs.") This is another annoyance with the film; it is completely ethnocentric with one-dimensional Japanese characters. This annoyance is especially evident when Akumora challenges a staged Kwong Gung, stating that the Japanese heroes are much better than Chinese's heroes. This infuriates Master Su during his 80th birthday celebration and leads to his death (when he jumps over a large crowd of people and apparently has a heart attack.) With the death of Master Su, Miss Lee decides to revive the Ching Wu School. This leads to an obvious clash with the Di Wah School.

One of the biggest problems with this film (yes even worse than the ever-yelling Jen Da So, the kiai spewing daughter of Akumora) is that Jackie is misused and miscast in this film. He constantly gets beat up by both Japanese and Chinese and yet refuses to learn Kung Fu. He does not get a decent fight scene until at least three-fourths of the film is over and yet he obtained his skills in just a few days (it is amazing what anti-Japanese sentiment can make you accomplish). When he does fight, his skills are quite evident. Jackie is very acrobatic and his fight scenes flow well though he is relegated to using actors who are weak in martial arts (with a few exceptions like Han Ying Chieh) and they slow down many of the action scenes.

I am a fan of Jackie Chan (and many of the HK films of this era), but this is not a film that rises above mediocrity. While it is not worse than many films during the 70's it has a few negative attributes that will doggedly follow it -- New Fist of Fury followed one of the most beloved of Bruce Lee films with a weak sequel and misused a future Hong Kong Superstar. Useless Tidbit: look for a small cameo role for Lo Wei where he portrays an inspector.

1970s kung fu movies have never exactly been known for outstanding (or comprehensible) plot. So, if you're anything like me, you were expecting this movie to be like the rest of Jackie Chan's early career: silly, unrealistic, and largely nonsensical, but fun nevertheless just because of Jackie's sheer force of personality. And, of course, his incredible stunts and fight scenes.

Unfortunately, New Fist of Fury fails even to meet that modest standard. The entire first half of the movie is apparently dedicated to the development of the plot. Bad move on the filmmakers' part. A kung fu movie is about kung fu, not lots of boring... *talking*. Jackie doesn't even start to learn kung fu until the movie is nearly over, for pity's sake! This would be forgivable, I guess, if the resulting plot were at all interesting. No such luck. Besides which, most of it simply becomes irrelevant by the second half of the movie, when everything hinges around a straightforward martial-arts-school showdown. As for the ending... well, I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say it's incredibly abrupt and surprising. And not in a good way.

This isn't to say there aren't fight scenes. There are several of them pointlessly interspersed throughout the tedious plot development, and one big one at the end that *almost* makes the rest worthwhile. But when the fights do break out, even when Jackie is actually involved, this isn't the almost cartoonish, balletic violence we see in his other movies. Rather, it's fierce and bloody -- the actors in the final fight scenes chomp down fake blood capsules like M&Ms -- and seems to hinge around the frequent use of kicks to the groin. (The guys kicked in the groin, inexplicably, are all given lingering closeups.) The fight scenes are still incredibly cool, of course, but not worth sitting through two hours of cheesy dreck.

In brief, this movie is too ridiculous to work in terms of plot, and its fight scenes are too nasty and spaced-apart to redeem it.

A few particularly ridiculous things to look for, if you watch this movie anyhow:

1. The high-pitched whoops and screeches during the old kung fu teacher's speech. (I don't know if that was a loon being tortured to death, or the cries of agony from one of the groin-kick victims.) 2. The old kung fu teacher's leaping-and-shouting related death, and the fact that his body still stands there looking annoyed afterwards. 3. The Japanese army captain's dubbed-over voice. "Weaselly" is a vast understatement here. 4. Jackie's Fist of Fury technique -- described on the back of my VCR tape case as "a new and deadly art, never before revealed on the screen" -- which involves waving his arms up and down slowly during funky 70s hypno-music. Deadly indeed.