A fighter seeks revenge against three gang leaders who killed his sworn brother.

Thunder Kick has everything you’re sick of seeing in old school kung fu; another tired revenge plot, Bruce Lee rip-offs, celebrity cameos billed as starring roles, low budgets, and endlessly repetitive action scenes.

With less than stellar looks, Lee Gam Kwan awkwardly steps into the lead role of Chow Tse Chien, a seemingly unbeatable martial artist who finds his mother being threatened by his cousin and a fighter played by Bolo Yeung. After temporarily receiving aid from a stranger, mom sends for Chow who wipes the floor with these brutes. The stranger, Wong Kai Tai and Chow become sworn brothers and Wong purchases a new home for the underprivileged family. Wong gets home just in time to have himself killed by a gang of thugs who have been causing trouble in the area. Chow comes to visit and vows immediate vengeance after learning what happened. Cooler heads convince him to bide his time and learn more about this gang which is actually split into three groups, each with a leader who owns a gambling hall, an opium den, and a brothel. After the three villains have each been duped into thinking they have made an exclusive business deal that would leave the other two in the cold, Chow makes his move. He attacks each man separately, which eventually leads him to the strongest fighter who runs the gambling joint.

This film bears the mark of two fatal flaws that doom it to mediocrity. The first is lame fights. The most important rule in a kung fu movie is to have entertaining action. That’s what we’re all looking for and its missing from this film. There is plenty of action, but the choreography has no flavor and characters simply kick and punch each other with zero flair. Lee Gam Kwan was never meant for starring roles in this type of film. Although he does briefly emit a smidgeon of emotion in one or two scenes, his martial arts abilities and charisma are not strong enough to carry the load he’s given. He does attempt to copy Bruce Lee’s famous series of kicks in Fist of Fury (1972) which knocked down a number of foes in rapid succession. The filmmakers even swiped music from the same film, but it doesn’t work. And looking leaner than usual, Bolo Yeung makes a brief cameo that’s not even worth the effort.

The other flaw is that despite Lee Gam Kwan’s lackluster performance, he’s virtually unstoppable. There’s nothing worse than an already dull action film where the hero never appears capable of losing. Even Bruce Lee would get bloodied up before finishing off the villain, but Gam Kwan apparently has no equal. Not surprisingly, the final battle is long and drawn out. But, the whole scene becomes ridiculous after the lead villain takes a beating no human who possibly take and keeps on coming back for more.

I imagine that Thunder Kick refers to Lee Gam Kwan’s frequent legwork, although there is no mention of any particular kung fu style. Sadly, he’s no Hwang Jang Lee and this type of film is just another example of the many cheap and uninspired retreads that plagued the Hong Kong film industry in the mid-seventies.

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