Confronto em Chinatown

After watching the recently released and remastered version of Heaven And Hell, I started digging through my collection and found possibly Fu Sheng's greatest film, The Chinatown Kid. This kung fu gangster story sports some awesome fight scenes and is a perfect example of why Shaw Brothers was truly a dynasty back in the day. With fantastic fighting skills, matinée idol looks, and magnetic charisma, Fu Sheng was on his way to becoming one of the greatest stars ever in Hong Kong cinema. Unfortunately, an automobile accident took him away from us too soon. This classic, featuring Fu and the original 5 venoms really needs a legitimate release. Hopefully, it will happen in my lifetime.

This movie is a classic of the late star Alexander Fu Sheng. Here, he plays a guy who gets in trouble back home and is then sent to San Francisco. He finds work at a Chinese restaurant but after getting fired for standing up to gangsters, he joins a rival gang and makes it big.

The current DVD versions of the film are horrendous. Too bad, since this is an all-time classic.

8 out of ten for the movie, 0 out of ten for the DVD transfer.

No pun intended - I am not sure if anything was shot in America at all. It is quite obvious as with many if not all other Shaw Brothers movies, many shots especially those outside, were made without any permissions - i do not even have to look that up ... it is that obvious to me. Speaking of obvious, as you may know, cars have their steering wheel on the left side ... except for the UK and back in the day in Hong Kong too (a few other countries too, that are not important right now - most countries though and especially the US would have it on the left side) ... something that is obviously wrong in this movie .... well wrong location wise, but right from the standpoint from where the movie was shot.

Now if you don't mind smaller things like this ... you will have quite a lot of fun. Shaw Brothers movies may be more known for their classic Kung Fu movies, but "contemporary" Kung Fu movies (1970s in this case) like this one worked for them too. Really good cast, even if most may not be that well known for most western audiences ... still good choreography and tight story. Liked it a lot.

I don't normally watch martial arts movies that take place in a modern day city, but I kept seeing parts of this movie on T.V. and it eventually caught my interest.

This is actually a good movie. You do sort of get close to some of the characters (good acting for this type of movie).

Watching this movie today, it does feel rather dated, with the bell-bottom pants and some of the background music. Though, some of the music is kind of "cool" sounding, and fits in with the scenes. Wait till you see the modern digital wrist watch that the lead character becomes obsessed with (remember those big ones where you had to push a button to see the red LED light up the time? I do!)

The story is good and does have some morals to it. The scenery does look rather phoney. It looks as if a strong wind might blow down some of the stores downtown. Is a hot dog stand supposed to convince us that this is really America?

The dubbing is also very funny, and stereo-typical of Chinese people and kung fu movies.

Most of the fight scenes in this are not that great, and is probably the film's weak point. There seems to be too many fight scenes in this movie anyway. This is one of those rare martial arts film where the plot is more interesting than the fighting.

To some it up, this movie does have "campy" elements, and there are some poor production qualities. But the acting, character development, story, and even a few positive production values make this into a very watchable movie.

I recommend this to fans of Chinese martial arts movies, especially the older 70's/80's movies. Or anyone who likes to watch something a little different from time to time.

7 out of 10 stars.

Again, the 5 Deadly Venoms (and Fu Sheng and Wang Lung Wei) prove why they're the best martial artists on screen! The action is first rate, but as usual the cameraman doesn't capture the whole scene in some parts. This, however is the only real flaw in this film. The story is much better than average and Philip Kwok finally plays one of the bad guys!