Film: Choy Lee Fut
Year of production: 2011
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Tommy Law Wai Tak & Sam Wong Ming-Sing
Starring: Sammo Hung, Timmy Hung Tin Chiu, Kane Kosugi, Yuen Wah, Lau Kar Wing
Genre: Action/Drama/Martial Arts
Country: China
Language: Cantonese
Review by: James Noble
This film was screened at Terracotta Film Festival in May 2011.
With the success of the Wing Chun-themed Ip Man movies, Chinese cinema offers us an exploration of another of its kung fu styles, this time the widely-practiced Choy Lee Fut. The film of the same name also offers up the first big-screen pairing of martial arts movie legend Sammo Hung with his son, Sammy. Do co-directors Law and Wong have an international cult hit on their hands?
Jie (Sammy Hung) is a Chinese ex-pat living in the UK, who is visited by his wandering kung fu master father (Sammo Hung) and encouraged to return to China. After a fight against local thugs, Jie decides to do just that, and returns to his old Choy Lee Fut school, now run by his Uncle (Yuen Wah), with his Japanese friend Ken (Kane Kosugi) in tow.
No sooner have they got into the swing of their training than they are approached by representatives of Pan-America, a nefarious corporation who seek to absorb their school into their empire. Jie is dead-set against this and refuses, but when an agreement contract is revealed, showing the genuine signature of his father, Jie has no choice but to challenge Pan-America to a martial arts tournament, with the winner getting control of the Choy Lee Fut school.
While Jie and Ken train for the tourney, Jie begins to fall for Xia Yu-fei (Wang Jia-yin) a Pan-America representative, who happens to be the long-term girlfriend of Zuo Zhang-hong (Steven Wong), the toughest fighter on the Pan-America side. Can Jie maintain his focus in training, and win the heart of Yu-fei?
All the ingredients for a fun, undemanding martial arts flick are here, but Choy Lee Fut squanders an impressive cast on a thrown together script that does not challenge its obviously low budget with anything approaching narrative ambition or character depth. The flimsiest of excuses are found to turn the plot in the necessary directions at every stage – Jie’s reasons for leaving his life in the UK (filmed not in the UK, but in the rather obviously Chinese location of Thames Town, a British-themed development near Shanghai) are something to do with apparently constant gang-fighting and an elusive message in the frankly spurious philosophy spouted by his master/father. In fact, too often, the script substitutes cod-Zen philosophy for narrative objective, momentum and stakes. Even though the committed cast try their best, there is simply nothing here for an audience to invest in.
The script issues extend to plot threads established (Jie’s fight with a British gang in a restaurant) and then never picked up, or directionless scenes, such as Jie being invited into the school by his Uncle, so they can talk, and then immediately going off with a senior student - the scene never establishing what Uncle ever wanted to talk about. With a goal of only creating enough reason to credibly justify the climactic martial arts tournament, too many questions are left unanswered – for example, Yu-fei and just what she sees in the admittedly handsome, but rather bland Jie, and why she would risk her apparently stable relationship, not to mention her career, for a young man who is insistent to the point of obsessive (his own attraction to her not obvious beyond the aesthetics). And the question of why Yu-fei, a power-suited career girl, seems to fill her mid-afternoons with (not unappealing) vigorous, Flashdance-style dance routines in what may be a dance studio, or may be a car park (perhaps a combination of the two) would be destined to become one of the great, unanswered questions of world cinema, were Choy Lee Fut to get a wide international release, which does not look likely.
The production is broadly shoddy, with unconvincing dubbing for the English-speaking characters by Chinese voice actors. Sammo Hung’s top-billed cameo, book-ending the film, is a real disappointment, but his presence – and the presence of rising star Dennis To – makes one wonder how the production company weren’t able to secure extra financing, if only to pay for another draft of the problematic script. The locations and settings are generally restricted to the Choy Lee Fut school, the Pan-America office, and a few selected interiors. Several flashback sequences are rendered with unconvincing CGI backgrounds which, while giving them a certain dream-like quality, underscore the limits of the budget and the apparent speed of the shooting schedule.
Perhaps the biggest problem with Choy Lee Fut is its lack of insight into what makes this particular kung fu style special, and worth fighting to preserve. Unlike Wilson Yip Wai-shun’s Ip Man movies, which took the time to educate the audience on the basic principles of the Wing Chun style (thus ensuring maximum audience enjoyment in the scenes), directors Law and Wong offer no such meditation on Choy Lee Fut. In addition, the camerawork and editing employed by Wong in his role as action director render the style visually elusive, indistinguishable from the unnamed martial arts practiced by the bad guys. The characters are mired in a story without genuine, relatable or compelling conflict, over a martial art that the audience struggles to be impressed by.
That’s not to say that Wong’s action direction is bad. In fact, the fight scenes – few and far between though they may be – are one of Choy Lee Fut’s chief pleasures. The overly-stylish camerawork may slightly undermine the crisp choreography, as well as the athleticism of the talented cast, but when Choy Lee Fut seeks to get the audience’s pulse beating a little faster, it generally succeeds.
But the chief pleasure of this film is the performance of Yuen Wah as the ageing Choy Lee Fut master with a permanently wry, bemused expression that suggests the actor is not taking anything seriously and is just having fun. Yuen’s charisma – not always on show in his earlier, smaller supporting roles in ‘80s Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung vehicles – offers the audience a way into the film and gives them a consistent delight to look forward to, no matter what fruitless detours the script takes.
A huge disappointment, given the cast, and a missed opportunity to promote a wonderful kung fu style to a wider international audience. Decent fight scenes and a terrifically funny turn from Yuen Wah alone can’t quite bring Choy Lee Fut up to the level of ‘recommended’, although the first big-screen pairing of Hung sr. with Hung jr. will ensure that it remains a footnote in genre history. JN
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