Millionaire’s Express, The (1986)

Hong Kong’s event picture of 1986 is undoubtedly Golden Harvest’s star-studded comedy actioner MILLIONAIRE’S EXPRESS (aka SHANGHAI EXPRESS). Under the direction of leading action maestro Sammo Hung, this Chinese New year release draws together top action and comedy talent from around the world to create a slapstick eastern Western with Sammo’s usually high-grade fight choreography and the great Yuen Biao front and center.

It is a mammoth production by Hong Kong standards that features a who’s who list of both veteran and emerging martial arts stars and stunt actors all performing together. It is hard to imagine a movie that better represents the energy and dynamic flavor of Hong Kong’s prolific ’80s-era cinema than this production which offers a little bit of everything.

Fans of Hong Kong cinema have very little to complain about, particularly when able to appreciate the parade of talent that crosses the screen. Yet for the uninitiated, this may be a bewildering experience, at best an amusing circus show of oddities and at worst a strange knockoff of Italian and American Westerns.

The story is highly ambitious for a Sammo Hung picture and involves a series of sub-plots that eventually crash into one another as the action mayhem eventually takes over where the comedy begins.

In a bid to revitalize the hometown he once abandoned, a sort of Chinese version of a dying frontier town in America’s Old West, Cheng Fang-tin (Sammo Hung) escapes capture by Russian soldiers and a bounty hunter (Kenny Bee) and concocts a plan to open a casino resort with prostitutes. He is not welcomed back by the suspicious townsfolk or the new sheriff, Tsao (Yuen Biao). Nevertheless, he carries on. In order to divert paying customers to his resort, Cheng blows up a nearby railroad to force a train full of wealthy passengers to stop.

The problem with Fang-tin’s plan, besides Tsao’s efforts to stop him, is that an international gang of bandits, led by FIST OF FURY star James Tien and TRANSPORTER director Corey Yuen, have set out to rob the train passengers and get a hold of a Terracotta painting being smuggled out of the country by a Japanese envoy. When the train is halted, the bandits take over the entire town, forcing its inhabitants and the train passengers to team up and fight back.

At the head of this bandit crew on horseback are a diverse and highly skilled collection of martial arts stars that include Dick Wei from Taiwan, Richard Norton from Australia, Cynthia Rothrock from the U.S., Leung Kar-yan, Chung Fat, and Philip Ko.

Comedy touches are added by LUCKY STARS actors Richard Ng and Eric Tsang. The former is a passenger on the train determined to carry on an affair behind his wife’s back. The latter is joined by MR. VAMPIRE star Lam Ching-ying and KUNG FU HUSTLE’s Yuen Wah as the town’s former police force, who rob the bank and attempt to skip town.

The Japanese envoy is played by “Silverfox” himself, Korean superkicker Hwang Jang-lee, best known for his excellent performances in THE SECRET RIVALS and DRUNKEN MASTER He is joined by FIST OF LEGEND’s Yasuaki Kurata and Kurata’s protégé Yukari Oshima in her first Hong Kong movie and. These three are the wild cards in the melee that ensues towards the end as they come up against both bandits and townsfolk.

Sammo makes a nod to the black and white WONG FEI HUNG series by having Jimmy Wang Yu stand in for the legendary Kwan Tak-hing, as Fei-hung’s father Wong Kei-ying. He gets into a scrap with Kwan’s long-time screen rival Sek Kin (ENTER THE DRAGON), while their onscreen pubescent sons briefly battle in an amusing exchange of classic kung fu forms.

The first 50 minutes is dominated by situational comedy and the wind up to the action as the heroes fight back against the bandits in the final reels. Sammo had originally shot more footage that incorporated more star appearances, but was forced to trim them out so as to keep the movie a reasonable length. Although the story does feel rushed at times, it was probably the right decision.

Sammo Hung really was in his prime as a filmmaker when this movie came out and despite some faults, such as mismatched costuming and rough visual effects at the beginning, it’s a remarkably polished effort that holds up well over time, in part due to its well defined characters and superb action editing and choreography.

Fine cinematography from Arthur Wong and Peter Ngor shows much of the skill they have exhibited in more recent features including INTERNAL AFFAIRS 2.

Genre fans get to enjoy a variety of fun match ups that you won’t find anywhere else. Yuen Biao takes on Sammo Hung in a rapid-fire match. Yasuaki Kurata trades kicks with Richard Norton. Sammo Hung does his best Bruce Lee impersonation for Cynthia Rothrock. Although far less impressive in this movie, Hwang Jang-lee still musters some wicked moves against tag teams of Chung Fat and Lau Kar-wing and Sammo and Yuen Biao.

The finest match up is between Yuen Biao and Dick Wei. These two are both fantastic screen fighters with acrobatic prowess. They deliver incredible stunt and fighting moves.

Yuen Biao really takes command of his role, both in acting and action and proves to be every bit the leading superstar his fans have always known him to be despite limited opportunities to prove it. Of special note, Yuen Biao performs a phenomenal flip off the side of a four-story building, unassisted and without wires. In one single take, he recovers from the land, leaps up and begins a short scene of dialogue. It is without a doubt one of the finest stunt scenes in Hong Kong movie history.

For being a newcomer at the time, Yukari Oshima really stands out with a fantastic homage to chambara films. With sword in hand and ninja-like moves, she slices through bandits with a dynamic performance that no doubt helped usher in the era of the Badass Female Fighters Club, soon to be joined by Moon Lee, Cynthia Khan, and Michelle Yeoh.

The only disappointment from a martial arts fan’s perspective is the limited action in the first hour of the movie. Sammo had the added pressure of meeting the demands of the Chinese New Year audience and it wasn’t enough to make a wall-to-wall action movie. Add to the fact that kung fu movies were in serious decline by 1986. It needed heavy doses of broad, family-friendly comedy. The style of comedy is very Hong Kong in flavor and travels less well than Stephen Chow’s work since GOD OF COOKERY. It may be less amusing to some Western audiences, but remains true to Sammo’s style as evidenced in earlier films like ENTER THE FAT DRAGON and TWINKLE TWINKLE LUCKY STARS.

As an eastern Western, THE MILLIONAIRE’S EXPRESS is a very strange production that isn’t always well thought out and certainly doesn’t deserve any awards for art direction or screenwriting. Yet it is a unique feature from Hong Kong that is immensely entertaining on multiple levels. It truly deserves to be in every genre collector’s library. It’s a film that gets better with repeated viewings, especially as you come to appreciate the incredible pool of talent involved. But above all, this is a terrific showcase for the multi-faceted talents of Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao.