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Chop Socky! |
 hop
Socky films are basically martial arts porn. Low budget, no-name stars,
and they exist simply for the action scenes and combat. The plots, when
they even bother with them, are ruined by the dubbing into English and
editing, and are irrelevant to the action anyway. I recommend fast
forwarding over the talking parts and just getting on to the next fight
scene.
Movies Reviewed on This Page:
Other Martial Arts Film Reviews:
In other words: the scores are 1-10, with a "All movies/Chop Socky" format. The only score that's the same for both is the "combat realism" score since after all, if these martial arts movies can't do that right, what good are they? "Realism" in this case is defined loosely, since after all, in the genre it's understood that fighters can occasionally leap five meters straight up, if they're holding a sword and their opponent is about to make an equally-high leap. Reviews are arranged alphabetically, using the name of the film on the (usually) US version I saw. Many of these films are released with different names in multiple countries, so check the IMDB page if you want to find other titles or more information.
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The Dragon Strikes Back, 1972
This film stars Chen Lee as a wandering monk type dude, in
Texas. Yes, he's a Chinese cowboy, in the Old West. Curious about this one,
we looked it up on IMDB and found that it's actually an Italian film. It's a spaghetti western, as they call them, but one with a Chinese martial arts guy as the hero. No, it's not worth watching just for this novelty aspect. The plot involves the hero, Shanghai Joe, arriving in San Francisco, popping in to Chinatown for a brief moment, and then buying a stagecoach ticket to travel east to Texas, where he pursues his dream of becoming a cowboy. Predictably enough, he meets with constant racism and physical attacks from one drunken white idiot cowboy after another. The movie gets monotonous about 2/3 of the way through, when Shanghai Joe has had at least half a dozen different groups of cowboys, ranchers, gamblers, etc, try to rob him, cheat him, trip him, insult him, and so on, always culminating with them attacking him and him kicking their asses.
___________________________ Fists of Bruce Lee, 1978 This film is one of the many 70s films by martial arts guys that followed a simple plan: "I look sort of like Bruce Lee, so I'll change my name to a phonetic version of his and try to become a bigger star now that he's dead." This one stars Bruce Li, and no, there's no reason at all to include "Bruce Lee" in the title other than blatant marketing bullshit. It has nothing to do with him, or his Jeet Kun Do style, or anything else. I don't usually worry much about eye candy in these types of films, but this one gets a special mention for being the single worst transfer I've ever seen on a DVD. They took the original wide screen movie and stretched it out to fill the full screen, top to bottom, but didn't do it very well. So the sides of every scene are cut off, and the characters are 8 feet tall and skinny. Simply putting this one into a decent letter boxed format would have improved the visuals and the movie substantially. You can't adjust it either; wide screen and other options are grayed out on the display menu. Story: The plot is hard to follow even if you don't fast forward over all of the talking scenes. It's set in modern day (well, 1978 modern day) Hong Kong, and has something to do with the Hong Kong mafia, rival crime bosses, and their struggle for power. Lots of different gangs fight in relatively non-lethal and non-weapon fashion, Bruce Li wins every fight he's in, and lots of extras get knocked out. There's a huge cast, with maybe 50 actors shown, of which at least 20 have multiple speaking scenes. The rest are just random thugs (If you can call 5-foot tall Chinese guys in eye-splitting 70s leisure suits "thugs.") who shout a word or two before heading into the heavily-choreographed combat. Bruce is posing as an electronics expert who is installing a security system for one of the crime bosses, who just happens to have a cute daughter. Yes, I know, what are the odds? These are the least violent crime bosses in history, who have only unskilled and unarmed martial arts students for protection/muscle, so you've really got to wonder how they hustled up the money for the palatial mansions they inhabit. Numerous fights ensue, none of them for any good reason, until eventually there's one last battle where all of the bosses are in the same place, and it turns out that Bruce is an undercover Interpol agent. He wins, of course, after doing the old, "Handsprings make me bulletproof!" avoidance trick, when one of the bad guys finally pulls out a gun. The girl survives too, but since these types of movies are always pretty much sexless, he doens't get any. Not exactly Bond, Bruce Bond, is he? Martial Arts: This movie has a ton of fight scenes. I mean a ton, like 25 or 30 scenes of at least 2 minutes in length. Lots of them have multiple guys going, usually 4 or 5 after Bruce, but there are plenty of other random gang rumbles, where a dozen or more of the instantly-forgettable lesser characters are out there punching and kicking at each other at the same time. Almost all of the fighting is empty handed, though there are a few scenes with poorly-handled nun chucks, inexpertly-wielded knives, or horribly-swung staves. Do not watch this one for the weapon stuff, since it's just dreadful. The fighters are fairly no-nonsense, and some of the moves look like they might hurt, but it's all pretty much touch style. Hit them, they fall down, you move on. No one ever does any arm breaks, or joint locks, or choke/submission holds, and no one is much on finishing off an enemy once they go down. They land a couple of punches, knock someone down, wait chivalrously while the punched guy does that "press hand to mouth to check for blood; then look intense and furious" bit, then go back into it. A few guys are killed by weapons, but mostly they just get bloodlessly punched out, with the occasional faux-Bruce Lee one-footed stomach stomp, which invariably results in the downed guy straining and holding the foot for a moment, before going theatrically limp. Everyone in the movie can fight, at least, to some extent. They all do basically the same types of Kung Fu though, with nothing high flying. Some guys are more athletic and do some leaping kicks, and everyone is flexible enough to do head high crescent kicks and back kicks, but they never look very impressive or threatening. There's really no point in kicking if your kicks aren't any more powerful than your jabs, other than that it looks better on film. And since this is a movie, that's probably why they chose them. If you've done any martial arts it's hard to watch most of these fights, since they are so obviously choreographed, and no one ever takes the openings they get. Fighters are constantly throwing long, slow punches, or swinging kicks that aren't going to hurt even if they hit. Step into them and land a hard punch, or kick out their plant foot and break their ankle or knee. Anything but ducking back, or just ducking the kick. They never even have any nice sequences, where one guy does a high kick, the other guy spins under it and throws his own kick, the first guy parries that, etc. They just take turns, politely and calmly, kicking at each other. Reminded me a bit of the Tae Kwan Do tournament we attended a couple of weeks ago, though honestly, those kids had a lot more intensity and speed with their attacks than the guys do in this movie. Overall: The combat scenes in this one definitely grade higher quantity than quality, but if you just want a to watch a lot of different guys punch and kick each other, over and over again, this film should scratch your itch. |
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
