Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen (2003)

Mortal Kombat star Robin Shou reveals the history, faces, dedication, and pain behind Hong Kong’s amazing action stunt choreography through interviews, film footage, and a behind the scenes look at an original action short film entitled Lost Time.

Hong Kong stuntmen are a rare breed who embraces pain with resignation and danger with apparent fearlessness. For years, they have been the ones who take the hard falls without inflatable mats, fly through glass, and get kicked, punched, or beaten repeatedly. Yet they almost always come back for more, proud of their accomplishments and in the knowledge that they can do things that few in the world would dare let alone succeed at. Often underpaid and working under intense pressure, most of the stuntmen have remained faceless to moviegoers while the action stars they double or receive hits from get all the glory.

Apart from Jackie Chan’s many outtakes and his documentary Jackie Chan: My Stunts (1999) that highlights his own Stuntman’s Association and their expert talents, little of what the average stuntman endures on the set of a HK action film has been shown. Even less is known in the Western world about the origins of this unique tradition.

Enter Robin Shou, former Hong Kong stuntman who became a Hollywood star in Mortal Kombat. It became his personal mission to bring the efforts and achievements of Hong Kong’s finest to the attention of general audiences with Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen, a documentary that explores its subject more thoroughly than any previous, but trips up with the ambitious inclusion of a short film meant to show HK stunt work from different perspectives.

Red Trousers is named thus for the red pants worn by Chinese opera students and performers. The film explores the history of this artistic tradition which combines fluid acrobatics, acting, singing, and martial arts, for this is where the majority of film stuntmen and their training came from until the ’80s. The film goes on to interview legendary stunt coordinators Sammo Hung and Lau Kar-leung who discuss their early experiences in training for and becoming stuntmen and what makes their craft unique. In the documentary’s most poignant moments, Robin visits a modern opera school in mainland China and interviews young and dedicated performers no older than sixteen. They are proud of their accomplishments, but fear for their future knowing full well that their art is a dying one.

The main attraction is a short film entitled Lost Time that is woven into the documentary scene by scene. It’s a martial arts film complete with a basic science fiction premise and look that blatantly draws from The Matrix and Star Wars. What works with this feature is that Robin has assembled a crew of experienced stuntmen and he takes the time to show what each major stunt looks like filmed behind the scenes and as a finished product. The lengths these guys go to for a perfect stunt is impressive and seemingly crazy. There is also some solid fight choreography to be seen from multiple angles. But still, the problem here is that the before and after stunt scenes are awkwardly and occasionally haphazardly edited together with the other documentary footage. The audience often ends up seeing the finished scenes twice, on top of the behind the scenes perspective. The other problem is that there’s actually an attempt to create a story within the short film with a few non-action scenes. Perhaps meant as a way to spice up the documentary, this dramatic aspect to the short film really serves no purpose and is too poorly constructed and conceived to be even remotely interesting.

The actual documentary portions of Red Trousers are enlightening to anyone unfamiliar with Hong Kong film, but fall far short of being thorough. Very few of the many stuntmen who worked throughout the ’60s, ’70s, or ’80s are represented and there are precious few examples or explanation of specific stunt work from this era. The emphasis in the short film and the main documentary is mostly on falls, wirework, and basic fight choreography. But there is virtually no explanation of how these scenes are constructed. The viewer is mostly left with a stuntman’s thoughts of watching out for his own safety or his desire not to let anyone down. Other important HK stunt work elements are never mentioned or shown. You won’t see specific martial arts styles, advanced acrobatics, trampoline use, vehicle driving techniques, specific weapons use apart from the sword, or pyrotechnics. All of these skills are part of even an opera-trained stuntman’s bag of tricks and would have been nice to see in place of lesser portions of the short film.

The main disappointment with Red Trousers is that the documentary gets lost within its own production. The core narrative is missing a clear outline and coupled with some rough editing the whole thing sort of meanders out of control in the second half until everything is quickly reigned in near the end. I put most of the blame on the short film which is an interesting idea that could have worked, but ultimately does more harm than good.

To keep things in perspective, Red Trousers is still a valuable look at an underrated field of work within the film industry. By not digging too deep or getting too technical, Robin successfully targets general audiences less familiar with Hong Kong action filmmaking. He also successfully gives the otherwise unsung deeds of HK stuntmen and stuntwomen a chance to shine and that’s certainly a laudable task for a stuntman who crossed over to starring action roles, yet hasn’t forgotten where he came from.