The Man from Hong Kong (1975)

In a rare co-production between Golden Harvest and Australian producers, MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE star Jimmy Wang Yu is a kung fu fighting and romancing police inspector from Hong Kong whose failed mission to extradite a Chinese drug smuggler (Sammo Hung) sets him on an explosive collision course with a crime boss played by former Bond man George Lazenby. Rough and tumble fight choreography and spectacular stunt sequences highlighted by high-flying hand gliding and uniquely Aussie car chases provide dynamite showcases for some of the best stuntmen working in Hong Kong and Australia at the time including Grant Page (MAD MAX), Corey Yuen and Yuen Biao.

THE MAN FROM HONG KONG is quite unlike any other Hong Kong co-production before or since. It was partly the product of the newly formed Australian Film Commission, formed in 1975 by the government to promote the growth of the country’s film industry. They sponsored The Movie Company and British writer-director Brian Trenchard-Smith who had previously helmed KUNG FU KILLERS, a documentary on Asian action cinema that appeared on Aussie TV which mostly featured donated film footage from Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers studios. Brian had previously been a stuntman and he engineered his first major feature film as a showcase for Australia’s best stunt work and his favored stunt actor Grant Page.

Page, who performed all of the film’s hand-gliding scenes and frequently doubled Wang Yu for some of the more difficult stunt sequences, is featured in the film as an assassin who targets Sammo Hung. When he is spotted on the roof by Wang Yu, a chase ensues that leads both men to a Chinese restaurant where they battle each other to the death. It’s a frenzied skirmish with excellent choreography that favors rugged and realistic combat, as opposed to the exaggerated wuxia-flavored fighting that Wang Yu had been previously known for performing in his films. Grant Page visibly pushes himself as hard or harder than any of the Hong Kong players in attendance and the effort obviously paid off. While he never became much of an actor he did go on to become his country’s top stunt coordinator by taking charge of memorable action in MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME and THE LIGHTHORSEMEN. He also briefly turned up in Jackie Chan’s MR. NICE GUY.

The film’s other Aussie action maestro is Peter Armstrong who crafts a memorable car chase sequence where Wang Yu narrowly survives an assassination attempt, steals a muscle car and chases down the three culprits. This sequence involving dangerous pyrotechnics and daredevil driving also highlights the stylized cinematography of Russell Boyd. He creatively uses mounts to provide a variety of dynamic camera angles that still look fresh nearly 40 years later. Boyd has since lent his skills to visually enticing films like GALLIPOLI (1981) and MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003).

Golden Harvest and their production team also had a significant role in producing great action for the film. Their 22-year-old star action director Sammo Hung choreographed many of the fight sequences and had a small role where he got to briefly tangle with one-time wrestler Roger Ward and also with Wang Yu.

The film’s second outstanding fight sequence is pure Hong Kong goodness with Wang Yu taking on a roomful of Sammo’s team which is also made up of future stars Lam Ching-ying and Yuen Biao, and action director Corey Yuen. All three can be seen getting dramatically knocked around and bloodied by Wang Yu who is doubled at times but still performs enough of his own stunt work. There is only one point in the movie where Wang Yu resorts to his old tricks by bounding unbelievably over a fence. Otherwise, his moves are refreshingly grounded in reality.

In spite of the generic kung fu elements and other bland references to Chinese culture, it’s nice to see Wang Yu’s character treated with some respect. Trenchard-Smith crafted the character in such a way that it could have been easily adapted to any ethnicity. Sure, Wang Yu does all the fighting that his Caucasian partners do not but he also gets the girls and isn’t partnered with some buddy who gets equal billing unlike all of Jackie Chan’s Hollywood ventures. In supporting roles, Wang Yu gets a couple local cops, one of them played by Hugh Keays-Byrne. He provides the film with much needed humor to offset Wang Yu’s stern persona. He played an even more memorable role in MAD MAX as the villainous Toecutter, leader of the biker gang who terrorize Mel Gibson and Joanne Samuel. Ros Spiers and Rebecca Gilling are basically old school “Bond” women and serve little purpose except to flash skin and give Wang Yu someone to romp around with between beating up bad guys.

As for Australian actor George Lazenby, this film was actually his second with Golden Harvest. He previously starred alongside Angela Mao in STONER (1974) and performed his own fight work in both films under the guidance of Sammo Hung. Lazenby had a background in martial arts and had also been a student of Bruce Lee at one time. Supposedly, Lee had wanted to cast Lazenby in a movie for Golden Harvest but it never happened due to Lee’s premature death.

Lazenby plays a martial arts-trained crime boss who tangles with Wang Yu on two occasions. Neither fight is particularly great but they’re adequate. The star holds his own well against Wang Yu and makes up for rough form with the ability to convey real power and surprising speed in his movements given his relative size. He’s actually a good match for Wang Yu because neither of them fights better than the other. The studio must have felt the same way because producer Raymond Chow teamed them up again in 1976 for A QUEEN’S RANSOM.

Examining THE MAN FROM HONG KONG from a Hong Kong movie fan’s perspective, the production is refreshingly complete. Hong Kong action films from this period rarely balanced their action with a stock Hollywood formula that incorporated a little bit of everything with measured quality. While nothing about the film is exceptional almost every element feels like it received a fair amount of attention by the director. The pacing is solid despite a few unnecessary plot tangents. The set ups, camera work and editing are very good with regard to the action scenes that dominate the film. Brian Trenchard-Smith may have spent most of his time working in TV but he displays a strong grasp of scale with regard to feature film production. The film also benefits from excellent locations in and around Sidney and Hong Kong, as well as an above average soundtrack. Noel Quinlan weaves a terrific pop-oriented ’70s score around the action that evokes the ELO-like sounds of the film’s theme song, “Sky High,” as performed by British pop band Jigsaw.

Looking back over 20 years of Golden Harvest’s co-productions with overseas film companies, THE MAN FROM HONG KONG ranks as the second best next to their first co-production, ZATOICH MEETS THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, where they teamed up with Japan’s Daiei Motion Picture Company and Shintaro Katsu’s production company. That still does doesn’t make it great on a larger scale. The film’s director calls it a spoof of the James Bond franchise although there are few clear signs of that. Aspects are obviously exaggerated by Western standards of the day but in the context of Asian cinema, excesses such as Lazenby’s heroin and weapon filled vault are too mildly stated to be outright funny, at least on the small screen. There are actually more obvious gags in some James Bond films than there are here. The film looks more like a lightweight knockoff of the James Bond franchise with a generic cop-versus-robbers plot served with a twist of typical cultural-clash and fish-out-of-water elements and topped off with thinly disguised plot holes and pointless action sequences that do not serve the story but do provide for some fun thrills akin to the kind of dynamic and daring stunt work that Jackie Chan would excel at a decade later in Hong Kong.

It could be said that THE MAN FROM HONG KONG and its mix of Eastern and Western action film conventions was the forerunner to future action classics like PROJECT A, ARMOUR OF GOD and POLICE STORY. The film combines the best fight work of Hong Kong with the best stunt work from Australia, as of 1975, and blends the two together quite well, better than most of Hong Kong’s subsequent collaborations with Hollywood. Much of that could be attributed to the wild genre film industry that had sprung up in Australia in the 1970s where some of the world’s best stuntmen were emerging and their willingness to take risks mirrored Hong Kong’s stuntmen. At the center of it all is Jimmy Wang Yu and just like his roles in the ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN and THE CHINESE BOXER, he found himself at the forefront of Hong Kong action cinema. Ironic considering that Wang was actually one of the weakest screen fighters among the territory’s many genre stars.

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