Dream Team: Lau Kar-leung and His Crew in ‘The Professionals’ (1967), Part 2

THE PROFESSIONALS (1967). Directed by Chan Man. Starring Patrick Tse-yin and Josephine Siao. Action direction: Tong Kai and Lau Kar-leung.

The downtown hipsters in the Hong Kong film industry of the 1960s all worked for the Kong Ngee studio. No Cantonese opera could be found on their sets; instead, art directors and and cinematographers took inspiration from starkly modern thrillers and urban romances imported from the West. In 1967, Kong Ngee hired kung fu choreographers Lau Kar-leung and Tong Kai to handle the action scenes for a cat-and-mouse mystery film starring Patrick Tse Yin, the studio heartthrob (and father of current pop star Nicholas Tse). The female lead was Josephine Siao Fong Fong, who was moving away from her teenage swordfighter image. Lau and Tong were about to sign with the big Shaw Brothers studio, where they would mature into the most distinctive and influential choreographers of their generation. THE PROFESSIONALS required fight choreography for scenes where the stars fought gangs of “teddy boys,” played by members of the stunt team. Both Lau and Tong have bit roles, and the sharp-eyed viewer can spot Lau’s brother Kar-wing and the brothers Yuen Wo-ping and Cheung-yan in brief fighting parts.

Lau Kar-leung (fourth from right, in white shirt) in THE PROFESSIONALS.

The Lau brothers were born into a legendary kung fu lineage, the hung gar system of Wong Fei-hung and Lam Sai-wing. In fact, their father was a student of Lam Sai-wing, and Lau Cham played his own sifu in the Wong Fei-hung film series based on the lineage. Both Lau Kar-leung and Lau Kar-wing (Liu Chia Yung) knew their way around a film set from an early age, and both would go on to become notable kung fu filmmakers. I feel that Kar-wing tends to be overshadowed by his more famous brother (or brothers, if you count adopted sibling Gordon Liu), but his low-key, low budget comedies from the late 1970s and early 80s (THE ODD COUPLE, FISTS AND GUTS, HIS NAME IS NOBODY, DIRTY KUNG FU, and more) hold up very well after all these years. He appears in many of his older brother’s masterpieces too, from SHAOLIN MANTIS to LEGENDARY WEAPONS OF CHINA.

I covered Yuen Wo-ping’s appearance in THE PROFESSIONALS in my last entry (see Part 1), and certainly he needs no introduction to genre fans. His younger brother Yuen Cheung-yan is also an action director. US audiences are familiar with his work on films like CHARLIE’S ANGELS and DAREDEVIL. He can also be seen in Stephen Chow’s KUNG FU HUSTLE, where he plays the beggar who sells the kung fu manual to young Sing.

The action scenes in THE PROFESSIONALS are as much about attitude as they are about combat. The young toughs pose with exaggerated cool, then deflate comically under an assault by Tse or Siao. Bodies fly through the air, slamming into opponents and being slammed in return. Lau and Tong came up with fight choreography equivalent to the edgy Kong Ngee style, sullen and slouching before exploding into jagged violence. In the clip posted below, Lau Kar-leung (in print shirt with button-down collar) and three other thugs ambush and attempt a beatdown of Patrick Tse Yin, but are routed when Josephine Siao joins the fight in defense of Tse.