Mi zong Huo Yuan Jia (1981) Online

The star of this film was evidently meant to be Yuan Mao (playing the famous Chinese hero Fok Yuen Gap the founder of Ching Wu) but modern covers feature Hwang Jang Lee who plays a Japanese Bushido master who has no respect for Chinese kung fu and beats up any Chinese fighters he can find. And of course he is the only real reason to watch this. Yuan Mao is athletic but lacks any real charisma. His father (Kwan Yung Moon) hardly looks older than him and Tino Wong is not at his best here. The young girl (Yuen Chu = YuenGuk) is pretty good and athletic. A cameo by Lee Chun Hwa (who often played Bolo Young type parts) is fun. The end fight is 2 on 1 against Hwang and goes on for some time. Unfortunately right until the end Hwang looks much more likely to win than father and son playing tag team. The rest of the actors are stock characters. Only for real fans of Hwang Jang Lee - who does do some good kicking.

The Producer / Director is given on the film as Lo Chin Po (= John Law Ma ?).

Say what you like about the Hong Kong producers of kung fu cinema; no matter that much of the material they were putting out was poor quality, they were certainly prolific and churning out at least one film a week during the height of the genre craze. Sadly this often means that the films are slapdash and cheap-looking in nature, and (as with this movie) they sometimes feel like the narrative is being made up on the spot.

The story of YOUNG HERO is entirely ordinary. Some Japanese fighters are in China and wreaking havoc by beating up local martial arts experts and teachers. A family of fighters decide to fight back with deadly consequences. There's a little romance involving one character's girlfriend used merely to set up tragedy later in the story and one or two mildly interesting training sequences. Unfortunately the main stars are entirely lacking and never convince in their roles particularly at the climax. At least Hwang Jang Lee can be relied upon to deliver an entirely convincing master villain role, something he did repeatedly with skill and aplomb during these years.

The Japanese, featuring Japanese born South Korean Hwang Jang-Lee, are tearing down signs and beating up kung fu teachers to prove their martial arts is superior. Our hero befriends a beggar and takes him to tea. A fight breaks out. A girl steps in to stop it and she beats up our hero. The master learns of the fight and cuts off his training and makes him do book learning. The book teacher is uncle of the girl who beat him. The Japanese also defeat hero's teacher but do not kill him. They are also smuggling on the side. Master's son defeats some of the lesser Japanese but ultimately loses. He complains to teacher that he is holding back on secret techniques and these techniques are becoming lost. Our hero learns mental strategy from the book teacher and is able to defeat the girl now. (Why didn't she also learn this from her uncle will never be known.) The son gets a rematch and revenge but it is mostly accidental. Hwang Jang-Lee becomes more angry and returns to kill four sons. There is more training, more revenge on revenge, and even a lion dance is thrown in for some reason.

The movie seems to have big production values but remains obscure today. It was dubbed into English for VHS release and there is also a wide screen dubbed version but the one I have though wide screen is no better video resolution than VHS. There are also Thai subtitles in a few places for some reason.

I have said that the best of these movies are all about the martial arts for a story line. This movie, in addition to the revenge plot, is all about the martial arts but it is not one of the best. The movie is by the numbers, formulaic, good enough but never goes beyond that. There is only one moment of creativity and that it is the training session on the raft. I rate it completely average for the year and genre and it carries my average recommendation for the average fan.