Pirates et Guerriers

I don't think The Valiant Ones is nearly as good as the more well-known King Hu films out there, but it's definitely not terrible. I wasn't crazy about it, but that might be a consequence of getting the hang of other kinds of martial arts movies and not really remembering how King Hu's felt. I think you really have to be in a certain mood in order to slip into them properly, and The Valiant Ones wasn't quite doing it for me today.

It looks and sounds nice, and the action at the end is exciting. Before then, I did find it to be a bit plodding and it felt longer than 102 minutes... it was either hard to follow what was going on or hard to care; maybe a bit of both, but the technical qualities of the film and its bursts of action made up for that somewhat.

It starts with the helpful narrator explaining to us about the pirate problem. If you suspect the pirates are Japanese then you have been paying attention.

There is not much to this movie. The plot, characters, backstory, are all simple. Yet there is a lot to this movie. That contradiction is because of the director. Enough has been said about King Hu so I will say only a little more. He took all the simplicity and made it rich.

It could be said Sammo Hung did the same for the fights. It's almost all swordfights and that could make the action repetitive and tiresome. Sammo keeps the action fresh by keeping it simple.

I am a hard core fan of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984. I have had this movie on DVD for years now and just realized I never watched it. That was a pleasant surprise. More of a surprise was the enjoyment. I will add this movie to my list of best of 1975.

Late in the 70's Kung Fu cycle, director King Hu shows how to direct classic Wu Xia. This swordplay film focuses mainly on action. The setup is minimal, characters are barely introduced, if at all. No story, little exposition, no romance. Just a series of scenes where the heroes, always outnumbered, cleverly draw the pirates into traps, and then fight them. Hu is mostly interested in the tactics and cunning. His direction of the action scenes is exemplary and a joy to watch: dynamic movement, jump cuts, fast camera movements, quick strokes, rhythmic dancelike movements. The fight choreography is presented more like the films of the 60's, emphasizing rhythm and movement over clarity. This is not the movie to watch if you want to study different fighting styles. The most exemplary scene is the last one, which features a duel between Ying Bai and Sammo Hung. It does not matter that Sammo is a much better martial artist, the scene is so dynamic, cut with quick strokes at the fast rhythm of clanging swords, that the viewer cannot observe for even a short moment what each fighter is doing, but gets taken instead by the sheer momentum and mayhem. Only in the 80's did Tsui Hark and Honk Kong Cinema pick up where King Hu had pioneered.

The performers are charismatic, in particular Ying Bai as the cool hero (very 60's in style), and the lovely Feng Hsu as the cool, silent but deadly wife. She is such a striking presence in this film, that it is not surprising that King Hu featured her in practically all his movies during this period. Sammo Hung is appropriately menacing as the head Japanese pirate and was responsible for the fight choreography. The landscapes (possibly Taiwan) are impressively and beautifully filmed, creating great settings for the action scenes and adding to the pure enjoyment of watching this well orchestrated and graceful film.

THE VALIANT ONES (1974) is a mid-career work from celebrated Chinese director King Hu who worked in Hong Kong and Taiwan and specialized in costume adventures with martial arts themes. It's a historical swordplay adventure about Chinese officials trying to find a way to thwart Japanese pirates plundering the coast of China. It's all rather slow going until the final full-scale battle in the woods between the Chinese soldiers and the pirates and the final duels on the beach between the heroes and the head pirate.

It's nicely photographed on Taiwan locations, but the script is contrived, the characters restrained, and most of the fighting, until the end battle, not terribly well staged. There is some attempt to incorporate the newer kung fu styles then gaining ascendancy at Shaw Bros. In Hong Kong, but the lead actor here, Pai Ying, is not quite the fighter the part required. Further down the cast list are some important names who would become prominent in kung fu films a few years later. Samo Hung plays the lead Japanese pirate. Yuen Biao appears as one of the pirates and has a brief bout with the hero. Simon Yuen, patriarch of the famous Yuen clan and the title character in Jackie Chan's original DRUNKEN MASTER (1978), appears as a bald monk. Rounding out the cast is the beautiful and formidable Hsu Feng, one of director Hu's favorite actresses. The film is in Mandarin with English subtitles that are frequently hard to decipher in this full-frame VHS transfer which cuts off the subtitles on the sides.

ADDENDUM (5/29/23): This is soon coming out on Blu-ray, so I'll finally get to see a better copy and reassess it and revise my review.