The Bodyguard (Sammo Hung, 2016)

Jacqueline Chan and Sammo Hung in The Bodyguard

Cast: Sammo Hung, Jacqueline Chan, Li Qinqin, Andy Lau, James Lee Guy, Tomer Oz, Zhu Yuchen, Feng Yaiyi. Screenplay: Kong Kwan. Cinematography: Ardy Lam. Production design: Pater Wong. Film editing: Kwong Chi-Leung, Lo Wai-Lun. Music: Alan Wong, Janet Yung. 

Sammo Hung's The Bodyguard is a mashup of sentimental drama, crime thriller, and martial arts film, with the sentiment dominating. Hung plays Ding, an aging man with a fading memory, who lives alone after a breakup with his daughter precipitated by his failure to look after his granddaughter, who went missing. Ding's landlady, Mrs. Park (Li Qinqin), has romantic designs on him, and he's befriended by a little neighbor girl, Cherry Li (Jacqueline Chan), whose father (Andy Lau), is mixed up with some mobsters. Although he looks like an ordinary, overweight elderly citizen, Ding is retired from the Central Security Bureau, a highly trained cadre of bodyguards for the elite of the Chinese Communist Party. Eventually, this training becomes apparent when Cherry's father steals from the mob and goes on the run, the mobsters retaliate by trying to kidnap the girl, and Ding, haunted by his failure with his granddaughter, successfully fends them off. More complications ensue before the plot culminates in a big fight scene in which Ding single-handedly takes on a flood of gangsters. The scene is fairly preposterous in comparison with those in Hung's earlier movies: It's filmed mostly in closeup with rapid editing, an obvious cheat. Eventually, of course, Ding and Cherry are reunited and she becomes a caretaker for the man who protected her. Despite the mushiness, there's a warmth and generosity in Hung's characterization of the aging man, and he has a genuine rapport with his young co-star. For martial arts movie devotees, there are cameos of other aging stars of the genre like Tsui Hark, Karl Maka, and Dean Shek, who play elderly men who kibitz on the passing scene.    

Pedicab Driver (Sammo Hung, 1989)

Sammo Hung in Pedicab Driver

Cast: Sammo Hung, Max Mok Siu-chung, Lau Kar-leung, Nina Li Chi, Sun Yueh, Fennie Yuen Kit-Ying, Liu Chia-Liang, Billy Lau, Lung Chan, Hoi Mang, Cory Yuen, Manfred Wong. Screenplay: Barry Wong, Yuen Kai-Chi, Sammo Hung, Kin Lo. Cinematography: Leung Chi-Ming. Art direction: Chin Yiu-Hang. Film editing: Peter Cheung, Keung Chuen-Tak. Music: David Lautrec. 

Martial arts movies are like musicals: You don't watch them expecting plausibility. Just as people don't break into song and dance in the street in real life, they don't enter a room and start kicking and punching and somersaulting through the air. And as I learned from watching Sammo Hung's Pedicab Driver, which many admirers of martial arts films consider a masterpiece, you also don't watch them expecting consistency of tone. At one point the film is full of raunchy humor and fart jokes, at the next it's a romance, and then there's a duel using fluorescent light tubes as light sabers, and then it's a message movie about the desperation that drives women into prostitution, then there's a wedding followed by bloody deaths, followed by fights in which the villain gets what's coming to him, and finally a happy ending in which everyone seems to have forgotten how much pain they've been through. Which is all to say that I'm not the ideal audience for a movie like Pedicab Driver, just as many people are the wrong ones to watch, say, Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1952), but I managed to accommodate myself to it. 

Eastern Condors (Sammo Hung, 1987)

Cast: Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Haing S. Ngor, Joyce Godenzi, Chui Man-yan, Ha Chi-chun, Lam Ching-ying, Melvin Wong, Charlie Chin, Cheung Kwok-keung, Billy Lau, Yuen Woo-ping, Corey Yuen, Peter Chan, Chin Kar-lok, Hsiao Ho, Lau Chau-sang, Yuen Wah. Screenplay: Barry Wong. Cinematography: Arthur Wong. Production design: King Man Lee. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Danny Chung. 

Blithely stealing from classics in the genre, Sammo Hung crafts in Eastern Condors the action film to end all action films. (If only.) The premise is that after the fall of Saigon, the retreating Americans left behind a missile installation that they now want to disarm, lest it fall into the wrong hands. So the American military recruits undocumented Chinese immigrants now in prison for a variety of offenses to be air-dropped into Vietnam to destroy the facility. If they succeed, they will be rewarded with American citizenship and a large sum of money. If this sounds familiar, at least there are more than a dozen of them and they're not particularly dirty. Eastern Condors is full of gags ribbing the Americans, as well as a few that wouldn't pass muster in an American movie, such as a volunteer whose stutter is played for laughs until it proves fatal. There's more gunplay than kung fu in Hung's movie, although it ends with a great martial arts standoff that's worth sitting through the rest of the movie for. Hung, slimmed down for the film, plays a more serious role than usual, but the movie is stolen by Yuen Biao as the wily Rat Chien and Yuen Wah as a giggling Viet Cong general modeled on some of James Bond's more epicene villains. 

The Magnificent Butcher (Yuen Woo-ping, 1979)

Sammo Hung in The Magnificent Butcher

Cast: Sammo Hung, Kwan Tak-hing, Yuen Biao, Wei Pai, Fan Mei-sheng, Chung Fat, Hoi Sang Lee, Fung Hak-on, JoJo Chan, Tong Ching, Chong Kam, Lam Ching-ying, Yuen Miu, Tsang Cho-lam. Screenplay: Edward Tang, Wong Jing. Cinematography: Ma Koon-wah.  Art direction: Wo Mak. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Frankie Chan. 

A kung fu action comedy doesn't really need an elaborate plot, and certainly not one with the rape-murder subplot that sours Yuen Woo-ping's The Magnificent Butcher. What it needs is lots of setups for flips and feints, strikes and sweeps and rapid-fire conflict, and the rival martial arts schools of Yuen's movie set that up adequately. Mostly the movie is a showcase for Sammo Hung, the endearingly pudgy star whose agility belies his girth. I admit that I began to tire of so many choreographed confrontations, skillful as they were, and of the mugging of some of the actors, especially Fan Mei-sheng as Beggar So, but things picked up again when Hung's Butcher Wing took on Chung Fat's Wildcat, who displayed moves I haven't seen since the last time I tried to trim my cat's claws. Devotees of the discipline will relish the movie. Others may just want to sample it.