Cinema of Vengeance

Cinema of Vengenace is great, it's jam packed with action. If you like action movies with kung fu you should see this documentary. Not only does it deal with martial artists like Bruce Lee and Jackie but the gangster shoot 'em up movies by John Woo. It has an exclusive interview with Bruce Lee having him explain Kung Fu.

I remember buying this VHS tape back in the day when I was just setting out as a film fan. The cover of the tape made it look a lot better than it really was; let's just say that I'm glad I bought it in the sales. The cover predominantly features pictures of Van Damme and the like in an attempt to draw in the punters.

However, it doesn't feature much on the big name stars like Van Damme or Bruce Lee. Instead, it mainly consisting of filler involving nondescript Chinese guys running around and shouting and jumping. Such clips are of a poor quality and there's little inbetween to link such clips together. I like a bit of action and fighting, but the ramshackle way this 'documentary' was put together is just silly.

(1994) Cinema Of Vengeance DOCUMENTARY

A history and an introduction of Hong Kong Action cinema using many action movie clips from "Island On Fire"/ "Island Of Fire", "Tiger Cage 2", "Local Hero", "Cyprus Tiger", etc... with plenty of interviews from Bruce Lee, Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yukira Oshima, Cynthia Rothrock, Wong Kar Leung etc... Produced by some martial art magazine either "Black Belt" or by "Inside Kung Fu". It's best used as a reference for Hong Kong Cinema Action movie titles and nothing else if one doesn't just want to watch only Jackie Chan/ Bruce Lee films all day.

This is an over view of martial arts film history. It takes us from 1940's to the 1990's when the film was made. It has clips from all periods as well as interviews with many of the actors and directors that have worked in the genre. It is quite simply a must see for anyone who is interested in the genre or the history of film. Certainly its far from complete, the director did not interview everyone (Jackie Chan is not interviewed but is seen in a good deal of footage) and the film's use of clips is limited to what we'd now consider bargain basement films (early Jackie Chan, anything in public domain, no major films like those of Bruce Lee, and though there are interviews with Steve James and Menahem Golan there is no footage from any of the Canon ninja films). Minor flaws aside, you will not do better than this film for an over view of the history of martial arts films. I have yet to run across a film that so neatly wraps everything up. (IFC recently did a one hour program called Cinema Hong Kong:Kung Fu which is very good, and brings everything up to date but is much too short- Ideally that film and this would probably tell you everything you need or want to know about the genre). This is the real deal.

(Do keep in mind that things have changed since this film was made in particular with the collapse of the Hong Kong film industry, which is touted here as massive an thriving)