Winners and Sinners (1983)
Click to listen to Sammo's song
This movie really is a groundbreaking picture in the history of Hong
Kong Action Cinema. It was the first time that HK audiences really got
to see these great two icons together, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung in
modern dress, in like a modern day contemporaly action film. Most of
the action films made during this era were actually period pictures.
This picture was mad in 1983. HK audiences had seen Sammo in modern
dress the year before this film was made in a film called Carry on
Pickpocket, which was actually written by the same screenwriter Barry
Wong who wrote this movie.This movie was released in 1983 and earned well over HK$20 million at the box office. It was really sizable hit and established this particular blend of action and comedy.
I think one of the inspirations for this film series was the fact that Jackie and Sammo had both been members of The Seven Little Fortunes, which was a Chinese Opera troup which was organized by their Master Sifu Yu Jim Yuen at the Peking Opera School, when Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and all these guys were studying. So part of the inspiration for this series of film was the idea of bringing together five guys who would all have their very distinctive personalities and be playing tricks on each other and trying each one outdoing the other.
So there’s a little reference Sammo likes to throw in, ’cause Sammo is much like myself, is a big deputy of traditional Chinese martial arts, so even though in a movie like this you only got a few opportunities to kind of drop in that kind of reference, he’s put in this little flasback to Wong Fei Hung and later in the action sequences there’s a couple of moments that kind of reference period martial arts movies.
And here we have Sammo singing the title song, something he also
essayed on his film Eastern Condors. All of the people who’d been
studying at Opera School had basic singing technique, they learnt how
to sing, some of them were better, they had different abilities when it
came to singing popular songs. Jackie Chan had a very successful career
as a romantic ballad singer, primarily in Taiwan. Yuen Biao briefly had
a singing career and Sammo has never really, he sang occasionally on
films, in four of his films, but he’s not really known as being a
singing star.Great opportunity to see there two great stars side by side and again, this is the first time audiences in HK had seen a contemporary film with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung fighting on the same side
(restaurant
fight), working together on screen, even though they were both
superstars at this time. Jackie’s obviously slightly different league
to Sammo but it was a big drawing power when this movie first came out,
people wanted to go and see the picture because they’d seen Jackie in
period piece comedies, they’d seen Sammo in period piece comedies but
they’d never seen the pair of them in contemporary action films.Talking about Lam Ching-ying, he’s a guy who came up to the ranks like Sammo and the guys, coming from being a Chinese Opera student, he was in the Opera of Madame Fan fok Fa, big rival opera school to the one attended by Jackie and Sammo and the other guys.
Came in the industry
as a martial arts stuntman, made the progress to being a supporting
actor, and was really a brother in arms with Sammo, who kept him always
in mind to find roles that would really play to his strengths as an
actor, and as a physical performer. He really got his chance to shine
in the Mr. Vampire films. His greatest role is in Prodigal Son as the
Wing Chun master, and was also used to very good effect in the film Painted Faces in which Sammo starred, a faded opera performer. And
Ringo Lam also used him to good effect int he film School on fire where
he plays a cop, a straight role, an action role, a straight dramatic
role. This particular hairstyle we see him for Lam Ching-ying is for
the movie he was shooting at the same time, Hocus Pocus.
As you see Sammo again, in primary colours, this is kind of a
trademark of this film series… Sammo earlier, when he was imprisoned
was in black, Jackie’s rollerskating in yellow, and now for the big
finale Sammo’s wearing this wonderful red track suit and kind of like
belies expectations of the audience, because foreign audience must be
particularly amazed to see this guy with a build like Sammo’s, who can
move like him. And now it’s the first time to see Sammo in action. It’s
very smart, the primary coloured outfit, because it makes his movements
stand out all the more. Sammo is one of the great onscreen martial arts
competents of all time, belieing his … with his incredible acrobatic
moves.There’s always a challenge with these films for Sammo, of course for himself, for his own action sequences he could deliver martial arts action, but he also had to find little bits of business for the rest of the comedy team to do when they were not necessarily trained stuntmen or martial arts actors per se. So Sammo gets to show his stuff here with empty hand fighting and later bringing in some pole technique. That was the challenge I think, finding stuff the guys could do believably and doubling them convincingly and really never getting away from the fact that they can’t fight in a serious way, they had to be funny, they had to stay in character while still executing this kind of fight sequences.
Of course we’ve seen Sammo do a lot of stuff, since then we’ve seen Martial Law and all the o
ther films, but at the time I’d only seen
Sammo in small amount of stuff, we saw him in beginning of Enter the
Dragon but actually see him going to really show his physicality both
with empty hand and with a pole, it really opened my eyes to the fact
that as well as Jackie, there was really a whole new generation of
martial arts action actors and directors who’re ready to come to the
fore in HK.Sammo’s always loved putting on "beat up" make ups in any movie he’s in, he always gets beaten up around the face and always has this kind of black eye and bruises and all the other stuff that really adds to this character. This had become like a trademark of the kind of work Sammo does.