The Brave and the Evil (1971)

A large, well-organized gang of thieves led by the kung fu master “Devil’s Whip” Chao I-fu (Paul Chung) lay waste to a guarded caravan transporting relief funds for victims of famine. In response, two kung fu-trained heroes join forces in an assault on the gang’s mountain fortress to seek revenge and justice. Martial arts superstar Jimmy Wang Yu writes, directs and stars alongside emerging genre starlet Polly Shang-kwan in this masterful kung fu actioner from Union Film Co. that rivals the best of Chang Cheh’s bloody epics at Shaw Brothers and easily ranks as one of Wang Yu’s greatest cinematic achievements alongside BEACH OF THE WAR GODS and MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE.

The film also marks Shang-kwan’s first break with the wuxia genre as she segues into the kung fu genre with a commanding physical performance as a brutal fighting mistress with twin daggers and a lasso, hell-bent on killing the men who murdered her father and literally anyone who would dare get in her way.

As a filmmaker, Wang Yu is in rare form, even by Hong Kong standards. Having seen most of Chang Cheh’s actioners from this period, which were all choreographed by Lau Kar-leung and Tang Chia, I’m inclined to say that Wang Yu manages to direct large-scale fighting sequences, with support from action director Shao Sidao, that are equal in quality, and in some cases, superior to what Chang managed to cook up in Shaw Brothers classics like HEROES TWO and GOLDEN SWALLOW.

After a brief introduction to the villains, Wang Yu opens the film with a phenomenally well choreographed attack on a caravan by a gang of sword-wielding thieves. In one of his best fighting performances, character actor Ma Chi (FEARLESS FIGHTERS) portrays escort leader Hung Te-wei, the last man standing after his company is wiped out who fights a hopeless battle against Chao and his army of thieves.

Such scenes involving attacks on caravans were as common in martial arts films at this time as Native Americans attacking circled wagons during the heyday of Hollywood westerns. Wang Yu takes this convention beyond mere skirmishing, which was the norm, and turns it into an epic, six-minute encounter that, for its time, possesses all the drama and excitement of Donnie Yen’s last stand in Ching Siu-tung’s AN EMPRESS AND THE WARRIORS.

On a side note, one of the main thieves bested during this exchange is portrayed by a young Kenneth Tsang who went on to become one of Hong Kong’s top supporting actors, portraying the lead villain in Jackie Chan’s POLICE STORY 3: SUPERCOP.

Twenty minutes in we’re finally introduced to our heroes. “Iron Palm” Pai Szu (Wang Yu), an open-hand fighter with powerful fists, arrives in a nearby town where he rescues a young child from a galloping horse ridden by the slain escort master’s mysterious daughter, Hung Tien-chao (Shang-kwan), who races by in a blind rage in search of vengeance.

The pace slows slightly as Pai Szu makes his way to the bandits’ hideout on foot through a shortcut that passes an abandoned inn rumored to be haunted. This leads to an interesting aside where Wang Yu’s character meets a hopping Chinese vampire that is very similar in appearance to the fabled, Qing-era reanimated corpses made famous in writer-director Ricky Lau’s MR. VAMPIRE series.

Following a bit of intrigue that leads up to the heroes’ first meeting we arrive at the film’s second major fight sequence. Wang Yu and Shang-kwan briefly spar before having their first encounter with members of the gang, led by a minor boss (Miao Tien) posing as an innkeeper. Wielding her twin daggers and rope, Shang-kwan ends up in a vicious duel with the abacas-wielding Miao Tien, an actor she also fought in the excellent wuxia actioner RIDER OF REVENGE.

This interesting matching of unusual weapons is echoed later in the film’s frenzied finale as Wang Yu uses a flexible belt sword that hides a dagger against Paul Chang and his hard whip sword, similar to the one Michelle Yeoh used against Zhang Ziyi in their duel in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

It takes a while from the midpoint fight to get to the big finish. Pai Szu goes off to forge his special sword while Tien-chao makes the mistake of trying to infiltrate the bandits’ castle by herself. After another fine fighting scene, she ends up trapped in a formation fighting array that involves flaming ropes and must wait for Pai to come to her rescue. After all, it’s Wang Yu’s film and it’s his privilege to be the big hero.

Pai infiltrates the castle by posing as a one-eyed new recruit. In a great example of Wang Yu’s attention to detail, Pai lets Chao I-fu’s lieutenant win an initiation duel by faking an internal injury. Later, when he reveals his true intent and frees Tien-chao, Pai fights the same man and actually inflicts the exact same internal injury on him that Pai had earlier faked.

For the final 20-minutes, Wang Yu delivers non-stop action as Pai and Tien-chao struggle to escape from the castle. Shang-kwan’s character is weakened and basically sidelined for most of it while Wang Yu steps forth to deliver one of his best screen fighting performances. It’s not the most technically proficient from the standpoint of forms or technique but he makes up for his limited martial arts training by doing what he does best, theatrical presentation.

The editing, pacing and diversity in camera placement and character moves are what keep this fight energetic and very engaging. With the capable production capability of Union Film Co. the only thing lacking is a better quality soundtrack in place of the overly repetitious, Italian Western-themed stock music used.

Wang Yu was a student of Japanese and Western action cinema, more so than most of his contemporaries and it shows very well in this movie and in particular this end sequence. Imagine if technical elements of the fighting action in ZATOICHI and SPARTACUS was merged with the intensity of Jackie Chan’s THE YOUNG MASTER, the clever weapon gadgetry of THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN and the dynamics of Donnie Yen’s LEGEND OF THE WOLF and you might have something comparable to the finale in THE BRAVE AND THE EVIL. It’s an apt title to highlight Wang Yu’s equally solid script that states, “The brave and the evil never exist together.” Despite what some may think of Wang Yu’s abilities when compared to successors such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, particularly given his declining career in the late 1970s, he proves that in this film at least, quality filmmaking and kung fu screen fighting could exist together outside of the domain of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest.

Related Topics: Jimmy Wang Yu, Miao Tien, Paul Chung, Polly Shang-kwan, Shao Sidao, The Brave and the Evil (1971), Union Film Co.