Seeing Jackie Chan in his physical prime, doing what he does best is one of the great wonders of the world to behold and The Young Master is about as good a chance as any to witness it. This classic kung fu comedy masterpiece has few faults, especially when it comes to genre action and Chan’s unique skills. Even with Chan delivering some of the most jaw-dropping fight sequences of his entire career amid a modestly scripted tale of comic misunderstandings and criminal misdeeds, it’s amazing that his talented costars are not overshadowed or forgotten. This is what great kung fu movies are all about.
The Young Master is one of Chan’s first movies where he really begins to show his love for vintage Hollywood comedy and its wacky situational comedy. The plot unfolds like Bob Hope’s My Favorite Brunette (1947) or a similar thriller farce where an honest simpleton unwittingly stumbles into a criminal plot, is falsely accused of being a crook and has to fumble his way out of the predicament by bagging the real bad guys before he winds up locked up or dead. Although he uses your typical rural kung fu action scenario, Chan continues to shy away from the standard motif of the stern, nationalistic hero (think Bruce Lee or Ti Lung) by denigrating himself endlessly as the underdog who narrowly inches ahead of the competition, more through luck and crazed determination than through wits or skill.
This was Chan’s first film at Golden Harvest after happily parting with Lo Wei. It was critical that he uphold the expectations the public had following his successes with director Yuen Wo-ping. With producer Leonard Ho’s blessing and several top box office hits to back him up, Chan began what would become his standard procedure of flexing the kind of creative and financial freedom that most Hong Kong filmmakers could only dream of. It certainly paid off.
The film is essentially made up of a series of increasingly impressive and drawn out action sequences where the plot rambles on casually, acting as little more than an excuse for Chan to wow the audience again and again. In his biography, Chan mentions that shooting commenced before the script was finished, which may explain why the story is somewhat fragmented. (This hurried method of filmmaking was common in Hong Kong, but rare for Jackie Chan and other filmmakers of his stature.) But Chan knew what he was doing and aside from arguably extending some of the action beyond it’s ideal stopping point, the kung fu gels nicely with sporadic situational comedy and brief spurts of charged drama.
Kicking things off is one of the genre’s best lion dances, equal only to similar scenes Lau Kar-leung directed in Martial Club (1981) and Chin Yuet-sang and Hsu Hsia directed in Lion vs. Lion (1981). Notice how both of these came out a year after The Young Master, one indication that Chan was emerging as Hong Kong’s new leading trendsetter where action movies were concerned. First John Woo and then Tsui Hark would steal that title in years to follow.
Chan plays the second “brother” at the Jing Fung kung fu school, run by Tien Fung (Fist of Fury), who is called upon to fill in for their first brother and top lion dancer, played by Wai Pak. As the competition begins, Chan quickly discovers that his leading opponent is Wai, who has sold out to the other school. Lacking in skills to beat him, Chan is defeated, but being the better man he keeps Wai’s treachery secret. Unable to stay out of trouble, Wai ends up revealing the truth to their master and he leaves the school disgraced. In hopes of bringing him back, Chan heads to the opposing school thinking Wai may be there and instead discovers an overconfident student (Fan Mei-sheng) whom he must duel. This is where Chan unleashes his incredible and infamous iron fan fight. I say infamous because, by Chan’s own admission, a scene where he kicks up the fan with his feet and catches it with his hand took over 500 takes. It’s easy to see why as the maneuver came near the end of what was a very long and complex action take by today’s standards. This underscores in massively bold type the level of creative freedom and drive to perfection he really had. If the count is accurate, Chan deserves to be in the Guinness World Records. The current “official” record holder for most takes is Charlie Chaplin, who had 342 during the shooting of City Lights (1931).
From this point on the film takes a slightly different and better direction as we’re introduced to the vicious kicking villain, a convict played by Korean tae kwon do expert Whang In-sik. Wai joins two thugs, played by the film’s co-action director Fung Hak-on and a mohawk-wearing Lee Hoi-sang, in helping Whang to make a dramatic escape while in transit. By dressing similar to Wai and carrying the same type of fan, Chan is mistaken for Wai by a pack of bumbling policemen with swords. Chan makes fools of them with their own weapons in an extended version of a similar opening fight in Drunken Master (1978). But that’s only the beginning of Chan’s troubles when a crafty constable (Shek Kin from Enter the Dragon) and his teahouse bench-wielding son (Yuen Biao) track him down. This begins a series of genuinely amusing situations as Chan attempts to outsmart and outfight the pair. This leads to a fantastic teahouse bench-versus-pole fight with Yuen Biao getting a brief chance to show off his outstanding skills. This is followed by a dip in a muddy bog known as the “Thieves Toilet” and then it’s back to the constable’s home where a clog-wearing Chan tries to evade Shek’s swinging blade.
In a cleaver method of introducing a new kung fu style to the hero, screen beauty Lily Li bests Chan with a feminine skirt technique, where her skirt hides her kicking legs and flusters him. Later, when he escapes to help his friend Wai keep from being the thugs’ scapegoat in a planned robbery, Chan poses as an old man and takes on Lee Hoi-sang and Fung Hak-on in what becomes the movie’s signature fight. It’s a brilliant mix of physical comedy and martial prowess that turns sublime when a perplexed Chan snatches cloth from a nearby vendor and introduces his own form of skirt kung fu. This scene is one of the single greatest screen fights in cinema history, for creativity, skill and complexity. Chan is nothing short of brilliant and for their part, Lee and Fung perform as well as ever in keeping up with him.
The plot more or less dissolves at this point in the wake of Chan’s mammoth fight sequences and comic nonsense. From here there’s nothing but a short lead in to what becomes a true monster of a showdown unrivalled by all but the most epic of screen battles. In a nod to his previous duels with Korean superkicker Hwang Jang-lee, Chan picks Whang Ing-sik, another Korean superkicker to rumble with, mano e mano. For nearly 20 minutes, Chan runs up to Whang and gets his ass handed to him by a dizzying array of painful locks and left-footed power kicks, while Fung Fung (Fung Hak-on’s father) nervously cheers him on and eyeballs a sack of gold and silver that only moments prior Whang was going to kill him for. Only through sheer determination and a few gulps from Fung’s wacky water pipe does Chan stand a chance against this superior fighter, who dominates the majority of the fight. Chan must challenge the average moviegoer to the very limits of his or her patience with this fight, no matter how good it is. It’s like a freeform divergence into the abstract by jazz masters John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, where Chan takes us beyond the comfortable boundaries of a typical fight scene and into a realm of pugilistic insanity. Chan would revisit this scene for his finale to Drunken Master 2.
The Young Master has a few minor faults. One is the sometimes amateur camera work. It gets better as the film progresses, but early on fast zoom ins and zoom outs for dramatic effect are horribly abused. The fights, while exceptionally crafted, are almost all just a little too long. Rabid Jackie Chan and old school fans won’t care, but it unbalances the movie with what is clearly a fanatical attempt to impress on Chan’s part.
Original soundtracks in Hong Kong were considered an unnecessary expense at the time and Golden Harvest opted for some classical selections for The Young Master, primarily taken from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets Suite.” They make fairly good use of it, but its heavily theatrical sound doesn’t particularly suit the movie. The one place where the soundtrack, playing other music, does fit is during Chan’s skirt kung fu battle where it adds an appropriately festive tone.
by Mark PollardRelated Topics:
Genre: Kung Fu • Jackie Chan • The Young Master (1980)
