Warriors Two (1978)
Here we are supposedly in a bamboo forest but it’s actually in a
studio set in the old Golden Harvest Studios in Hong Kong and we have
one of our teacherly characters, Leung Jan, played by Leung Kar-yan,
demonstrating the techniques of Wing Chun against these bamboo poles.
This film was a smash hit when it opened in Hong Kong… and is a fan
favourite around the world ever since.Sammo very similar in style and mannerism to the character he played in his directorial debut Iron Fisted Monk.
There’s Lam Ching-ying who’s another keymember of Sammo’s stunt team at this time,
also worked with Bruce Lee. He would be the lead
character in Sammo’s second Wing Chung movie Prodigal Son.This is Sammo wearing the Cyrano de Bergerac disguise. This whole little comedy sequence here actually was quite longer but they cut it down. The film runs quite long anyway, it’s packed with good stuff but this kind of little throwaway scene was actually longer with Sammo getting his own back on the guys that tricked him.
Here’s Casanova in action. His real name is Wong Ho and was given the name Ka Sa Fa by Sammo, and was given the name Casanova by Joseph Lai. He is Korean Tae Kwan Do champion, and his nickname appearantly was The Human Tornado on account of his spinning kicks and in his younger days he trained in the icy rivers of Korea.
Sammo always tried to find opportunities for Lau Kar Wing to work with him in his movies and they actually formed a company together called Gar Bo, Gar for Lau Kar Wing and Bo for Sammo’s Chinese name Hung Kam Bo.
The acrobatic stuff is Yuen Biao and Yuen Biao is like an all-purpose double for everybody in films during this era. Pretty much if you needed acrobatics or very high flicky kicking techniques done Yuen Biao would be draft in to do them. So he was always very busy either playing supporting roles or acting in films. In Prodigal Son which is kind of the following up to this movie, he is not only playing a leading role but also doubling people as well. When you hire Yuen Biao you really got value for money.
What’s great about Sammo’s martial arts technique is, some people’s movies look like dancing, with Sammo it really looks like somebody’s getting hit, you really kind of feel the pain.
Again, nice camerawork. It’s always difficult to do these talky scenes and keep the camera moving in to keep things flowing, because there’s always the sense that OK you just stick two people facing each other across a table… but here you actually see Sammo finds ways to kind of pull back to show this beautiful room or an enterior set at Golden Harvest, so you see the whole thing in texture and even though this is a very brief dialog scene, really an exposition scene of the cunning plan being described, the camera moves and you don’t feel that it’s static, it kind of moves with … the pace of the action scenes.
… and again the customs of the time being observed these pleasantries
between these three even though they’re actually enemies. Notice when
the tea is poured he (Jan) taps his fingers, that’s something you
should always do when you have dinner with Chinese people at a Chinese
restaurant. If they pour tea for you, you should tap the table like
that. Appearantly, the story I heard was that it was actually invented
by one of the Emperors of China. What happened is, whenever the tea was
poured everybody had to bow to the Emperor and he kind of got fed up
with everybody getting up and sitting down so he says, "you don’t have
to bow, just tap two fingers on the table to indicate that you’re
bowing and that’s it". And that spread from the Court, out into the
rest of China. So you can actually learn not just fighting techniques
from Hong Kong films, you can also learn appropriate social practice.Lau Kar-yan, you can say he’s not a martial artist and he never went to a kung fu school but he did come in and trained at some length in Show Brothers and actually had a really solid background but he is a very good physical mimic and is used to great effects by Sammo and to lesser effect in his Show Brothers carrier. And he is one of my favourite leading actors, players, he has a very strong, very masculine presence and in this movie he really defined that… He was a major playing during this era at Golden Harvest… You see him working alongside Sammo in movies like Enter the Fat Dragon where he fights Sammo, he starred for Sammo in Knockabout opposite Yuen Biao, you also see him as a bad guy in the movie Odd Couple which starred Sammo and also Lau Kar Wing, who we saw dying a horrible death earlier, and also co-starring with Sammo in The Victim which is another great independently produced martial arts picture. So he had a great run with Sammo.
Here’s the Little Idea Form, which is the first form that’s taught to anybody who’s learning the Wing Chun style. And I remember when I first
watched this film I had been training Wing Chung and being so surprised
and impressed to see such a kind of truthful depiction of the martial
art. I mean, most movies, martial art films deal a kind of fantasy kung
fu. This is probably one of the very few ones that actually does really
show - it is a film, a narrative movie that works as an exciting
martial arts movie, but in the same time it also got the elements of an
instructorial film as it genuinely conveys not just the physical form
but also the principals of the Wing Chun style. So in that respect it’s
really martial arts filmmaking at a much higher level than it’s
normally practiced, because it informs, educates and entertaints.Sammo’s great, knows exactly how to use all the aspects of filmmaking from camera lenses, slowmotions, editing, everything you need to actually show martial arts to its best.
See behind them the plumb poles. They’re not actually a traditional Wing Chun training they would be used today, but I think what Sammo’s done, is something he did very much also in the choreography of Prodigal Son. Whing Chun does come from Shaolin and it evolves from
Shaolin. It would be unrealistic to think that the Wing Chun practice
now is exactly the same as it was in the days of Shaolin. This is Wing
Chun as it would be in this era. So you do have it’s differences,
different kinds of ability, different kinds of footwork, you have
different training aids, some of which probably have been dispensed
over the years for reasons of geography, for reasons of development of
society, and so the art has evolved. But Sammo’s done it going back
what’s it would have been like in this era, this is what I think really
makes him a martial arts genius. Sometimes people are critical, they
say: "Oh well, it’s not the way we do it now". I say no, it’ not what
the film is showing and I think if Sammo did a movie today showing
people learning Wing Chun in modern Hong Kong, in modern New York, the
film would kind of reflect that, but this isn’t about that, it’s about
people training back in the days… towards the end of the Ming Dinasty.This is a scene everybody remembers: the blindfold chi sau. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the plot it’s just an example, a chance
to show off some great kung fu comedy. Blindfold is definitely a
drill that Wing Chun exponents actually use but this is just an example
to show the bonding between these two guys and also show the typical
comic timing and genius of Sammo Hung… I always remember wherever Wing
Chun guys had come to Hong Kong and met Sammo they would always say, "I
love the scene when you guys are doing the blindfold". And actually on
the beautiful Hong Kong movie poster for Warriors Two the actual shot
of Sammo is this picture of him holding up one side of the blindfold so
he can cheat in the blindfold chi sau section. So obviously he thought
it was a memorable moment as well.And here we are back in the dummy chamber. That’s just a great Sammo shot, I mean, nobody mocks the camera quite like he does.
… you actually have to have the perfect tool for the perfect job. What’s great here is that Sammo subverts that, so we’re really gonna more mixed up, so we’ll have the wrong weapons for the wrong job. So not only does it kind of create some comedy but also it makes the challenge facing these heroes all the more demanding.
This is like another example in Chinese there’s always a saying: "One inch closer, one inch more dangerous". So here… one guy’s got a long spear and Sammo’s got this very short club, so he’s obviously in greater danger and has to find an environment which will negate his
opponent’s weapon. So it’s gone back to the idea of fighting the
opponent on the ground that is favourable to yourself. So again, using
the visual metafora film really to show the idea of make real the
concepts of martial arts and again, this is to me what makes a great
martial arts movie is, when it actually has ideas that are from the
actual martial arts, actually from Chinese philosophy and it expresses
them in a very visual… way. So it’s doing something that’s very hard to
do in another medium, and that’s what makes martial arts special.
Because if it’s just somebody standing talking to camera or just
somebody performing kung fu as it would be in a kung fu school, you
kind of don’t need a martial arts movie for that.Look again, beautiful camera, moving up and the sounds of this wood! This actually is an enterior at Golden Harvest, a whole bamboo forest. It’s the same bamboo forest we saw at the beginning of the film but there it’s shot at night. And the sound, this wonderful eerie sequence! I remember one of the earlier reviews I read of this film was surprised, because I think people have seen a lot of very bad kung fu movies or these very simple kung fu movies and here you had a director in Sammo, who had a very deft touch in terms of balancing tension, action and very black humour. So you had like all of this going on at the same time.
This actually plays back to a very famous Chinese Opera routine you see in performance in which the two players even though they’re
performing in bright light, pretend that the room they’re in is
completely pitch dark. And so they’re like moving around each other and
never quite connecting but they don’t know the other one’s there and
it’s kind of a dance in the darkness and it’s wonderfully done. It’s
kind of hard to describe, you get the chance to see it you’ll see how
it relates to this sequence, because it’s like an opera show, basically
playing light for dark so you actually have two people moving as they
would if they were in a darkened room trying to avoid each other and
their weapons.About this point Sammo figured out that he didn’t really have enough zap(?) to end the movie. Because technically you defeat these guys and you kill the main bad guy and that’s the end of the film. So Sammo being Sammo, had to go back to the well to come up with something else, so you have this application of these pressure points.
This is a Sammo Hung film so the girl needs to get killed and in the most painful manner possible… The great thing about Sammo is, you give him a football field and he can shoot in it, or you can give him a study like here, and you can actually get all these wonderful tricky stuff happening, he’ll use every inch of it.
Another classic thing: Sammo loves to kind of deface himself, so he always have bruises and scars and black eyes and things.
A lot of the movements you see here is not really classical martial art inspired, it comes in from the opera. All of these three guys are opera-trained, so what you’re really seeing is the kind of movement they were performing on a Chinese Opera stage, but then given this kind of overlay of Chinese martial arts, but that’s why these films look as remarkable as they do and that’s why a lot of the times when you get genuine martial artists making films they don’t look as good, it’s because genuine martial artists start from the position of martial arts and try to make it spectacular, these guys start off with it looking spectacular and try to make it more real to fit the demands of the story.
You really think Sammo’s gonna die. And by this stage of the movie you
kind of feel something for him. And that’s a tribute to him as a
filmmaker, that he’s taking the audience on a rollercoaster in terms of
its emotions, rather than just presenting a kind of one note display of
physical dexterity which a lot of other martial arts movies do.It’s really been a pleasure watching this movie again. I’ve seen it over the years and been constantly amazed how well it holds up, very strong narrative drive, colourful characters, amazing martial art history, really my all-time idol Sammo Hung at the highest of his game. And showing the real thing, showing people really doing movie martial arts as well as it has ever been done in history of the industry. It’s easy to become jaded, because we’ve seen so many amazing action films over the last 10-20 years, but Warriors Two for me still up there, as one of the all-time great kung fu classics and a testiment to this period in filmmaking in Hong Kong when kung fu comedy was really at the highest of its game and also for the Golden Harvest Studio.