The Proud Youth (1978)

Sadly Over-hyped

Best movie ever!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

THE PROUD YOUTH is another complex, evolving story of the martial world from the Shaw Brothers studio, based on a novel by Louis Cha. Wong Yue is the wandering swordsman hero, just on the cusp of being re-styled as a comedy kung fu actor in the Jackie Chan mould by the studio. The film is very much in the same style as the films of Chor Yuen, featuring rival clans, murder, and mucho bloodshed. Good luck following the plotting, which has so many supporting characters trying to upstage each other that you'll be hard pressed to follow every little detail of it. Still, the production values are sumptuous, and the supporting cast is exemplary, with all manner of familiar faces showing up: even one of the Lucky Stars team is here, Stanley Fung, a decade before he became typecast as a comedy actor! Best of all this is an action-packed odyssey packed to the brim with endless sword fights and death, all played out in the finest of sets.

The movie starts as many swords men practice by an elaborate indoor waterfall set that only Shaw Brothers had the resources to build. The clans are gathering to select a new leader. The narrator explains there is a problem with the evil clans. Michael Chan enters as a representative of the evil clans and attempts to rape a nun just to show us how evil these evil clans must be. Wang Yu prevents that but later he touches her hand and that has pretty much the same consequences as being raped according to the rest of the nuns. At the clan house there is a problem because one of the good guys plays music with one of the bad guys and they have even written a song together. The musician ends up dead and Wang Yu has to face the wall for a year. Lucky for him it is a very interesting wall with martial arts training written all over it and he becomes a master. After his "punishment" he leaves to take the sheet music from the controversial song to someone who can read it. He becomes a drinking buddy with many of the "evil clan" people. He meets Shih Szu who can read music and she pretends to be an old lady. Once exposed, he joins her on a mission to get Ku Feng out of the dungeon. The twist at the end is that the master of the good clan actually ordered Michael Chan to do bad things and frame the evil clans. This is the typical Shaw Brothers good stuff and is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. The waterfall set made for an excellent fight because of the challenging terrain. Wang Yu, a student of the Grandmaster of all martial arts movies – Liu Chia-Liang – also did perfect acrobatics on his trampoline jumps.

Considering that this was made 30yrs ago, it holds up quite well. The quality of the DVD is very impressive. A film of this vintage is usually taken from an old print which is faded and scratched. Because it is a period Kung Fu flick it could almost pass for a recent production. (The wire work and lack of CGI give it away. Nevertheless, it's reasonable given the technology of the day.)The twisty plots and sub-plots are typical of this genre. There's often the "Who's the actual bad guy denouement" and the clash of Good vs Evil. This film differs slightly in that it presents a lot of "Grey" to the mix. The choreography is better than in most films of this genre, and the balance of action to story is good. The bonus here is a story which makes sense.A Shaw Bro's Eastern can be likened to a John Ford Western.

A decent entry in the martial world genre from director Sun Cheung. We are introduced to the efforts of the Five Clans to eradicate the "evil" renegade clan. Not much is shown regarding this as the movie centers around the story of the "Proud Youth" who heroically rescues a Taoist nun from a rapist, she then nurses his wounds which angers the Taoist high priestess and the Youth's clan leader, his adopted father. They both refuse to listen to the nun or the youth about the circumstances. There's also a subplot regarding a warrior who is friend to a member of the "evil" clan which angers the leader of the Five Clans. A running theme in this movie is the clash between rigid social mores, pure friendship and moral righteousness. Anyway, it's filled with intrigue and plot twists.The film is less stylized then other Sun Cheung films, it seems more like an offering from Yuen Chor who specialized in "martial world" movies. While filled with the requisite fantastic fighting techniques, crazy weapons and wire-fu, the action scenes show Sun Cheung's solid direction and editing. The fight scenes in his movies frequently seem more intense then the other Shaw directors.A reasonable way to pass an afternoon.