BOXER REBELLION is one of Shaw Brothers’ biggest and most expensive productions to date where the studio combined their patented kung fu action with a historical drama based on the real-life uprising of cultish Chinese patriots attempting to oust foreign occupiers at the turn of the 20th century. The truth is that the film is really just another heroic bloodshed tale from director Chang Cheh, but with a bigger budget, a tad more character development and romance between on and off screen couple Alexander Fu Sheng and Jenny Tseng.
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to shelve any notion that this might be a serious treatment of the historical Boxer Rebellion. Hollywood tackled the same subject from the Western perspective in their sprawling 1963 costumer 55 DAYS AT PEKING starring Charlton Heston. SB’s version is, of course, from the Chinese perspective, but it’s difficult to tell which one is less biased or more inaccurate.
In BOXER REBELLION, three young martial arts brothers, played by Chi Kuan-chun, Alexander Fu Sheng and Leung Kar-yan, go in search of fellow patriots dissatisfied with Imperialist foreigners and wind up joining a rising sect of the Boxers, led by an opportunistic conman (Johnny Wang Lung-wei). Named as such for their use of martial arts, these boxers are revolutionaries who believe that spirits protect their bodies from foreign guns. They even dupe the Empress Dowager (Li Lihua), who gives them her royal blessing to fight the foreigners.
In reality, the boxers began as a movement dissatisfied with their own government and it was the Empress who completely redirected that anger against foreigners. This subject is never broached in the film and we’re left with a simplified version where peasants rise up in response to callous Western officials snubbing their noses and shooting desperate locals. Perhaps one truth exists where we see boxers looting and robbing from their fellow countrymen. At least in this way, the film doesn’t paint all Chinese as simply victims of foreign oppression.
Religious fervor and even the best internal kung fu techniques are no match for bullets. Despite their best efforts to overwhelm the foreigners with numbers, the Boxers, who eventually occupy the capital, are defeated by a coalition of nations and the Empress Dowager is forced to flee incognito. Leading the foreigners as they occupy the capital and even the Forbidden City is a German general (Richard Harrison) with a soft spot for a Chinese woman (Hi Chin) he previously met in Germany. As Chinese citizens are subjected to humiliation and worse, the kung fu brothers fight on.
Shaw Brothers and director Chang Cheh grossly overstep their abilities in this film. This is proven as kung fu actors Chi Kuan-chun and Fu Sheng struggle onscreen to find anything meaningful to do in the film’s unfocused second half. Really, the whole film is unfocused. No attempt is made to put the conflict into any kind of perspective. Historical inaccuracies abound and characters are often painfully two-dimensional.
Looking for character depth in a Chang Cheh movie is like looking for an invisible needle in a haystack. It’s generally not a problem where simple martial heroics and themes of revenge, male bonding and sacrifice are concerned. But Chang’s inability to go beyond and present more subtleties is quite apparent in a film whose subject matter demands it. One bright spot here is veteran actress Li Lihua’s solid portrayal of the Empress Dowager. But even in this, we’re presented with a very rudimentary picture of the Chinese government during this time of national crisis.
What doesn’t disappoint is Lau Kar-leung’s typically outstanding martial arts choreography. The three male leads are all competent kung fu actors and in Lau’s hands become fighting dynamos capable of disarming their gun-wielding opponents, turning fixed bayonets against their attackers and generally applying powerful Hung Gar techniques with ease. Lau takes advantage of the historical incident to highlight the contrast between artificial “spiritual” boxing and real kung fu, a topic he tackled head on in his directorial debut THE SPIRITUAL BOXER. Most of the opponents wind up being Japanese soldiers, played by Chinese stunt actors as a way to get around the studio’s lack of Caucasian stunt actors. Johnny Wang, as the corrupt leader of the Boxers, is reserved as the lead villain for our heroes to contend with. However, it’s not one of Wang’s best performances.
Fu Sheng does his typical clowning around, which is quite welcome, and Leung Kar-yan is respectable, but Chi Kuan-chun gets to show off his skills and finely-toned physique the most. In a somewhat unique scene, even by typical genre conventions, Chi leads his friends in putting on a drawn-out exhibition of skill in front of the Empress Dowager. Viewers may wonder at the seemingly fanciful display of Chi’s compact routines, mixed with a bizarre range of power-building shouts. Yet its all grounded in real kung fu technique and again highlights Lau Kar-leung’s contrast between authentic martial arts and the trickery that soon follows when none other than future kung fu star and world-class action director Philip Kwok steps up in a brief appearance to seemingly repel a sword blade with painful results.
(A reader pointed out that this exhibition by Chi is known as “tit sin kuen” or “Iron Wire Form.” The bizarre shouts represent different organs of the body. This internal style is meant to massage the body’s organs and build internal power. In the film, this style has also been mixed with elements of the five animal forms.)
Even if the drama is simplistic, it’s great to see Chi Kuan-chun and onscreen lady friend Hu Chin taking the dramatic lead. Both stars spent most of their kung fu movie careers relegated to low-budget independent productions that offered them few opportunities to break out of stereotype. For Hu especially, this is a nice role as she breaks from her seductress typecasting to play a more respectable woman torn between two lovers.
Interestingly, her other lover is a German officer played by American actor Richard Harrison, one of the few Westerners to get a leading role in a Shaw Brothers movie. This was actually his second starring role in an SB movie after playing the title character in MARCO POLO. Harrison was up to this point known for starring in a string of Italian genre movies. From here he eventually hooked up with martial arts movie shlockmeisters Godfrey Ho and Joseph Lai where he starred in numerous ninja-themed flicks.
BOXER REBELLION is far from a great movie with the rambling narrative being its biggest flaw, but it’s still a unique product from a studio that cranked out so many similar swordplay and kung fu actioners. With a fair amount of hard-hitting kung fu action and a lot of grand spectacle by Hong Kong movie standards, there is still plenty of entertainment value to be had.
by Mark PollardRelated Topics:
Genre: Kung Fu
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