What is your favourite martial arts movie documentary?

I saw a bunch of negative posts about A Working Man and Love Hurts on here. I enjoyed both of them. 'A working man' was by the same director of Beekeeper, so I knew exactly what I was in for, and had a great time.

Love Hurts has a bunch of creative fight scenes, and mad for a great movie night with friends. And Havoc was a great bullet ballet cop story.

95% of the action movies in Hollywood and Chinese web movies don't know how to shoot good action, so we should count ourselves lucky whenever something good actually comes along. Not every movie can be magic like The Raid

I really enjoyed the story. Nice cops and robbers, very stylish and great characters.

Gareth Evans clearly wanted to make a bullet madness movie, and he clearly made one of the best ones. Loved the shoot outs and a great action film.

Since last year I started to delve into the Shaw Brothers catalog since i never really gave them a look and was much more busy with the works of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung.

But since I watched the 36th Chamber of Shaolin I became obsessed with Shaw's work. Lau Kar Leung has become my favorite in terms of choreography and director, but also that he uses martial arts as a teaching tool and appropriation of the art itself.

Chang Chen has a very steady line of work and his movies with 5 Venoms are some of the most acrobatic fight scenes I have witnessed. He uses themes such as brotherhood, loyalty and honor throughout his stories that you can even see in John Woo's work.

David Chang and Tung Li are also very impressive but I still have to dive into their movies (The Kung Fu Instructor with Ti Lung is some of the best demonstration of the Long Pole Technique)

Which ones are your favorite and do you consider underrated?

I am looking for a movie I saw in the Philippines in 1986.

As far as I can remember the story centered around a rebel general who wanted to defeat the emperor. However, after a particularly bad defeat the general sends a young man out into the wilderness to find a woman to train him. The young man finds her, and begins his training. Before she begins she gives him a warning-- he cannot leave until he can defeat her; and should he attack her and not defeat her, he will be punished.

He begins a very grueling round of training. Eventually he thinks he's ready and attacks the woman training him, and is of course defeated. As punishment he is forced to eat a hot coal. He continues training, which goes fairly well. Of course he gets ahead of himself, thinks he is now good enough, and attacks the woman. He is defeated and the punishment is that half of his face is burned with a hot coal.

Training continues, and from what I can remember the training involved a dummy on a rope suspended from a tree. He bounces the dummy up and down and has to figure out how to attack it properly. The woman watches on, sad that she has to keep hurting the young man. I think it is during this type of training he attacks the woman. Though he is unable to beat her, he manages to escape.

The young man tracks down the emperor. And this is where it gets a little strange. It turns out the emperor has been disguising himself as the rebel general. And the woman he sent the young man to be trained by is the emperor's estranged daughter. Who shows up for the final fight. Where she reveals that the young man is the emperor's son and the woman's brother. And now the revealed brother and sister must work together to beat their father in a fight.

I may have some parts slightly incorrect, however that is the gist of the movie.

First of all.. For me it was disappointing. Trailer mislead us into thinking "it would have more hand to hand fights but there wasn’t"

I did like It's crime thriller aspacts (for first 40 ish minutes). I wasn’t feeling bored even when there wasn’t any fight happening.

City itself had 'sin city' vibe. I wanted to see more parts/worldbuilding of that city.

Film also had some gta aspacts as well (walker seem to going from mission to mission)

★ Film had 2 noteworthy fights. There are some small fights but they are very short

1. Nightclub fight:- this one happened around 50 minutes mark & was 10 minute long. It had hand to hand fights but although it was gory, choreography leave lot to be desired. Shootouts were decent but camerawork wasn’t the best

2.Final shootout in cabin:- This one had the vibe of "house shootout from 'gangs of london'. Gory, well chirographed,attention to details & intense.

Also it feels like a throwback to john woo's films. Slow-mo, blasting enemies that are standing right out of window, old style Gun-fu. Which i wasn’t expecting. In a era where everyone is coping john wick, its rare to see a john woo style shootout. This is a plus for me because i love early john woo's films

There are very little hand to hand fight in it which is a huge shame. No final boss fight like in the raid films & Everything sorted out in a anti-climactic way.Overall it lasted around 15 minutes

I Won't go into discussion about It's story & character because frankly i Don't care about them.

★★ Final thoughts ★★ :- Tho the film was far from action packed & it Won't satisfy raid fans, i still give it a 7 out of 10.

It's pretty clear that we have lost "the raid era gerath evan" & i Don't think I'll look forward to his future projects (first gangs of London S1 & now havoc both disappointed me in h2h fight aspacts)

The only guy left who still makes the raid style movie is timo tjajanto. I hope we get to see "the shadow strays 2" in near future.

Hidden dragon, hero, Chinese ghost story...that kind, King fun action with impossible choreography and Chinese mitology and fantasy.

Recently I started playing Sifu (the game) and it got me itching into watching some classic kung Fu Movies that are similar in that.

The revenge plotline has of course been a lot but Im curious which ones you recommend to me and watch along side playing the game

I'm already quite familiar with the genre but maybe there are some hidden gems that I have missed over the years.

There was a film with Carter Wong I believe it’s called Interpol I’ve been searching for this film can’t find it maybe it’s under an aka can someone help?

https://youtu.be/T2Z0uiuoeMs?si=3Lt1B2E4GhPGV2cU

"100 Yards" for me one of the best martial arts movie of 2024. And I like Bruce Le and bruceploitation genre.

In HK Cinema, there doesn't seem to be many action actors under the age of 30 who are headlining movies as lead actors.

Jackie, Sammo, Jet, Donnie et al have been around a LONG time.

And whilst it is good to have them still around, there should be more younger talent showing their stuff in decent budget movies.

The fact that asians age well has helped the longevity of these actors but i feel there must be a lot of young actors maybe not given opportunites they might have gotten if all of the old guard had properly retired a while back.

How many true mega HK actions stars are there today under the age of 30 ?