My Father is a Hero (1995)

MY FATHER IS A HERO, better known in the U.S. as THE ENFORCER, is a middling, escapist action/drama from writer-producer Wong Jing that stars Jet Li as a mainland Chinese police officer forced to leave his family behind to go undercover in Hong Kong to take out a maniacal crime boss (Yu Rongguang). The novelty is in seeing Li as father to a young wushu prodigy (Tse Miu) and their eventual action team-up to take on Yu and his two henchmen (Ken Lo and Collin Chou). Late singer/actress Anita Mui is also featured as a fighting Hong Kong inspector assigned to track down Li. The film and its heavily wire-enhanced action, all directed by Corey Yuen with assistance from Yuen Tak, is consistently over-the-top and slapdash at times but creatively engaging.

MY FATHER IS A HERO was conceived of by Wong Jing who originally intended to make it a crime drama without martial arts action. He had even considered casting mainland Chinese actor/director Zhang Yimou (HERO) in the lead role before opting to adapt the film into a vehicle for Jet Li. This may be why the film has an unusually strong dramatic component to it.

Sandy Shaw, who previously scripted Stephen Chow’s screwball comedy JUSTICE, MY FOOT! and the girl-powered superhero actioner THE HEROIC TRIO with Mui in one of the lead roles, was brought on board as screenwriter to lend a woman’s touch to the protagonists and their relations. It works to a point. The tight father-son relationship between Tse Miu and Jet Li provides an anchor for the rest of the film, even when Yuen’s exaggerated action threatens to turn the story into a circus.

Although Jet Li is the star of the film, the dominant focus is on Tse Miu’s character and his ability to adapt his martial arts training to survive encounters with baddies. Early on, Li is shown training his son in water breathing exercises to allow the child to endure extended periods with little or no oxygen. This becomes a vital survival skill for the young boy on more than one occasion. As a student of contemporary wushu, the boy has an uncanny ability to adapt this performance art to real-world self defense, whether on the schoolyard against bullies or in tandem with Mui when facing down axe-wielding gang members. The coupe de grace occurs when Tse Miu joins Li in facing off against Yu and his thugs. In a unique fight sequence that could only come from the mind of a Hong Kong action director like Corey Yuen, Li ties Tse to the end of a large rope and flings him at his enemies, turning him into a human, kicking rope dart. It’s a great sequence that is only shortly preceded by a scene where Yu, Chou and Ken Lo challenge the heroes with an amusing synchronized display of kicks.

The action is pure fantasy but Yuen’s strength as a director is his ability to encourage the same level of suspended disbelief throughout the production, regardless of what’s going on. In contrast, when he applied similarly exaggerated wire-fu action to a movie like ROMEO MUST DIE, helmed by a conventionally-minded Hollywood director like Andrzej Bartkowiak, the results were less appealing.

The problem with the action in MY FATHER IS A HERO, and with Corey Yuen’s choreography in general, is that after he began using elaborate wirework in period films like FONG SAI YUK, he couldn’t let it go in a modern setting. Yuen Woo-ping has the same problem. They’re approach to choreography has become largely dependent on wire enhancement even though they are capable of working without it. The finale in FIST OF LEGEND shows how well Yuen Woo-ping and Jet Li performed without excessive wires. It works great for films like KUNG FU HUSTLE and THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM but not contemporary actioners. Hollywood, with all of its superheroes and vampires, still can’t get enough of it but discerning audiences have been going through a steady bout of wire-fu fatigue ever since CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON became a hit in 2000.

One place where Corey gives the audience a break from wirework is during a fight sequence where Jet Li takes on a room full of attackers with a pair of tonfa. It’s a rapid-fire, Jackie Chan-like sparring sequence that is distinguished by a graceful showcase of Li’s real-life weapons-handling abilities. This is where his natural wushu form and posture comes out. Earlier in the film, Li takes on a bunch of mainland Chinese stuntmen and similarly applies elegant wushu form to a real-world combat situation.

One of the film’s best sequences to show off Corey Yuen’s broader ability to bring multiple elements together effectively occurs during a sequence set in and around a glass-framed restaurant that was constructed for this film. Car stunts specialist Bruce Law flips a car through the building which kicks off a violent gunfight that Jet Li ends up in the middle of.

Later, Yuen pits Li against Yu in a dark alley. Apart from interesting use of a garbage truck, this sequence is rather disappointing. The production designer uses colored florescent lights to decorate the walls and beams, as if this were some set of a classic DR. WHO episode. Florescent bulbs are a common gimmick that Hong Kong production designers have long relied on to cheaply spruce up a dull location or set. Its use can be seen at least as recently as THE AVENGING FIST. This use of florescent bulbs makes no sense within the film at all, except to give the screen fighters something to break over each others heads.

The original soundtrack is made up of bouncy, generic synthesizer music, the same variety that accompanies the majority of Hong Kong films from this period. For the U.S. release, an entirely new score was added. This one has more of a moody orchestral flavor that is just as generic but less obtrusive.

In addition to a different soundtrack to accompany the English dubbing, the U.S. version of this film possesses a few very small cuts, in some cases associated with intentional alterations in the translation. The purpose of this was clearly to excise a few snippets in the movie that were deemed to be less marketable to U.S. audiences. One example is where a comical suggestion that Jet Li and Anita Mui have been running an X-rated video business together was removed. Low brow gags like this have the unmistakable mark of Wong Jing on them. They apparently play well with Hong Kong audiences, given the continued success that Wong enjoys as a filmmaker, but in the context of the movie they really don’t fit well.

MY FATHER IS A HERO has a great premise, competent wire and gunplay action sequences, and a few excellent fighting performances from Jet Li in only his second modern-day action film after Tsui Hark’s THE MASTER (1992). Pacing is uncharacteristically slow for a Corey Yuen movie with few action sequences in the first half and emphasis on drama, but it picks up in the second half.

The film could have been a lot better in terms of balancing more realistic action with a story less peppered with odd comedic touches. Yet, this is more a family film, at least by Hong Kong standards which means that Western audiences may find it too violent for children. It could be argued that too much violence towards a child is shown. Some viewers will understandably cringe when they see Tse Miu’s head seemingly thrust through a glass coffee table, beaten and choked within an inch of his life. What makes it tolerable is that he gets to dish it back later in the film.

Tse Miu is a fine little actor, who with the aid of more physically talented wushu-trained child doubles, delivers a well-rounded performance. This was actually the second pairing of Tse Miu and Jet Li. Wong Jing has previously put them together in THE NEW LEGEND OF SHAOLIN, a LONE WOLF AND CUB-inspired take on Shaolin folk hero Hung Hei-kwun.