Wing Chun

One of the best movies in the careers of Michelle Yeoh and Yuen Woo Ping. Their talents for lighthearted comedy and pulse pounding action are well represented here. Certainly, Michelle's greatest solo film. The only minor complaint is that the film is bookended, like so many HK action films, with superb fight sequences, but drags for 30 mins, or so, in the middle. Still, ranks as one of the better kung fu films made in the past ten years. Highly recommended.

Wing Chun is an entertaining combination of slapstick humour and amazing martial arts fights. It's a romantic comedy at heart, one with a feminist bent. The story, while simple, features several memorable characters. There are setpiece battles that move the story along. Most of these feature Michelle Yeoh as the charismatic and beautiful Yim Wing Chun. Yuen Woo-ping's fight choreography is as usual inventive. He included moves that are quick and fresh, many of these aren't featured in other films. Donnie Yen's unusual turn as Leung Pok To, a man who has come to town to wed Yim Wing Chun is also of note. All in all, there's enough character development, humour, fights, and good scenery here to make Wing Chun one of the best martial arts films ever. It's not quite as good as the director's other famous film Iron Monkey (1993), but it's still a delight. Where else can you find actresses this good-looking and fights this exciting? Come to think of it, Peking Opera Blues (1986) probably influenced Yuen Woo-ping's filmmaking. I easily recommend seeing Wing Chun.

Yong Chun/Whing Chun(1994) contains action scenes which are brilliantly Staged and amazingly depicted. Many of the scenes with Michelle Yeoh are examples of why she is the Queen of Hong Kong action films. She is an action star to which many aspiring action heroines looks up to her. Michelle Yeoh combines earthiness beauty with physical endurance as Yim Wing Chun. I show Wing Chun(1994) at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge and became a big fan of the film and the career of Michelle Yeoh.

Michelle Yeoh stars as the titular Yim Wing Chun, the spiritual mother of Wing Chun kung fu (the kind they teach in Prodigal Son, amongst others). As you would expect from Yeoh, she is vibrant on screen, kicking a lot of arse and showing us the sensitive side to a martial arts hero.

Wing Chun's village is constantly under threat by bandits led by the…erm… flying simian family (well two brothers, Flying Monkey and Flying Chimp). After she cracks some skulls, while rescuing the widow ‘Charmy', she makes enemies of the local martial artists, who lose face after Wing Chun shows them up, and the bandits, who want her dead and for Flying Monkey to marry Charmy. The scene where Wing Chun shows the local martial arts heros the ‘Art of fighting without fighting' in the soya shop is amazing. Anyway, after castrating flying monkey, flying chimp decides to challenge Wing Chun, for the honour of the bandit clan. With inevitable consequences.

When Wing Chun isn't giving us great fight sequences, it plays it like quite a lot of HK cinema. For laughs. And, like a lot of HK cinema, it can get pretty irritating. A lot of mugging and juvenile humour are the order of the day here. Concentrating on that old Kung Fu film staple, getting laid.

Wing Chun was one of the first great high flying new style kung fu films and stands the test of time, nine years on. I really liked it, and forgiving its faults is easy. Although Donnie Yen was criminally under used, but that's not such a big deal.

This is a great showcase for Michelle Yeoh, playing the legendary first practitioner of the wing chun style, Yim Wing-Chun. Trouble is, there's not much of the wing chun style shown in the film. The problem is that though the wing chun system is a very effective style in real life, it's not very visually engaging, so Yuen Woo Ping had to throw in some high kicks just to spice up the action a little ... but then, we don't watch kung fu films for historical or technical accuracy.

Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen are both pretty good here. Certainly, Yeoh turns in a starry performance, though Yen could have been given more to do ...

Overall, entertaining enough, but not primo YWP fare.