Hero Youngster (2004)

Before avenging his master’s death by standing up to Japanese occupiers with a “Fist of Fury,” a young Chen Jun comes to the aid of a rebel princess (Marsha Yuan) as she fights alongside fellow rebel Ou (Yuen Biao) to keep a valuable military map from the Japanese.

Taking a heinous leap backward in the evolution of the kung fu movie is Hero Youngster which sees Marsha Yuan, who has yet to step out from the shadow of her famous mother Cheng Pei-pei, join the always underrated Yuen Biao for a tiresome and ultra-low budget Chinese versus Japanese tale. The main selling point is that this film takes the character created by Lo Wei and famously played by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury back in time to his childhood days.

Although produced in 2004, Hero Youngster might as well have been made in 1994 or even 1984. Perhaps emboldened by Lau Kar-leung’s failed attempt to revive the period kung fu movie with Drunken Monkey (2003), the makers of this film made an obvious, though even lower-budgeted attempt to draw on past genre conventions in every way possible. That isn’t such a crime in of itself, but the complete absence of any creativity or imagination where at least a few talented persons are involved is. Suffice to say, the still great Yuen Biao is once again horribly misused and abused in a worthless movie where he finds himself well-beneath where he deserves to be in Hong Kong’s admittedly rotting film industry.

Beginning with the story, Hero Youngster is doomed to failure. Like countless kung fu movies before it, the setting is pre-World War II China where the country is suffering the steady encroachment of stereotypically nasty Japanese occupiers and only a few, brave martial arts heroes can stand up to them. Marsha Yuan is a Ming princess on the run with a strategic map that a Japanese officer played by Billy Chow wants. She gets some aid from the boy who would be Chen Jun as she attempts to meet up with her uncle, a former general who is now in hiding. Along the way, she meets up with a street-performing beggar (Law Kar-wing) who isn’t what he appears to be and a restaurateur and fellow rebel Ou (Yuen Biao) who repeatedly shows up in disguise to throw rocks at her attackers. Fighting ensues, people are killed, the beggar is taken captive, and a rescue is mounted. Although the story was originally about the map, somewhere along the way that item is forgotten as the theft and rescue of a religious statue by the Japanese takes center stage.

The script is simply garbage and brings to mind everything I despise about bad Hong Kong filmmaking, apart from the mainstream bubblegum fluff starring the likes of the Twins. There is no artistic skill or passion involved in this film, or at least it doesn’t translate onscreen. There is a fair amount of wire fu and heavily-edited combat, yet it’s all generic and lacking in excitement. Yuen Biao still has plenty of life in him, but his abilities are wasted here. The child actor who plays Chen Jun shows some potential, but that’s all. None of the actors’ performances are even remotely engaging and I’d just as soon be watching C-SPAN to hopes of finding personalities of greater interest.

Making matters worse, the soundtrack is made up of poorly mixed synthesizer loops that were probably borrowed from one of countless martial arts television series. Add to that equally-poor sound effects work, shoddy lighting, abysmal camera work, and cheap dubbing… yes, Hong Kong is still working without Sync Sound on occasion.

Watch Hero Youngster to see the worst that Hong Kong has to offer or save yourself some grief and check out some true classics, also starring Yuen Biao like The Prodigal Son (1982) or The Iceman Cometh (1989).