Coward Bastard (1980)

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

COWARD BASTARD is one of the lesser films made by the Shaw Brothers studio, lacking the big names needed behind the scenes to make a film like this really zing. The main thing it has going for it is the excellent Yuen Wah playing a good guy for a change and getting quite a bit of screen time. Unfortunately he's only the second lead and the main guy is a mere Jackie Chan imitator who fails to make much impact. The story is episodic and involves a couple of restaurant workers encountering various oddballs and bad guys, from a bald guy who loves getting his head polished and toes rubbed to Lam Fai Wong playing a sneering creep in much the Dean Shek mould. Later, action comes into play when Johnny Wang Lung Wei and Kuan Feng show up to kick ass and get involved in the best action scenes. Wah only gets to fight twice, worse luck, but one of those fights is at the climax and the best part of the film. The rest is mindless comedy, particularly bad during a long digression halfway through involving a random beggar character and a bunch of idiots which has no connection to the main story.

At the restaurant Meng Yuen-Man is always in trouble. He leaves a mess and flirts with girls on deliveries. Master Jiu give the restaurant owner a hard time and he takes it out on Meng Yuen-Man. The cook is Yuen Wah. He demonstrates some cooking kung du. They complete the challenge of making the mysterious "Woman's Dumplings". Johnny finds Yuen Wah is the cook and has been seeking him for revenge. The two run off and also accost another Simon Yuen clone for a drunken master. After they get good enough they are able to return to the restaurant and there is a new order there once they fight and make things right.Yuen Wah is a prolific martial arts actor with a career span from the 1960s to 2016. This movie was one of his first lead roles, of which he only had few. He began martial arts training at age seven under instructor Yu Jim Yuen and alongside of Sammo Hung, Biao Yuen, and Jackie Chan (who were also about the same age). Jackie, Biao, and Sammo have all said in interviews that none of them were Yuen Wah 's match and that in a real fight or any other contest of skill Yuen Wah would beat them all.

The raucous Cantonese humor of the early Jacky Chan hit films was overwhelming the Shaw dominance of the HK movie industry. Why not try to make their own version? Lesser known Shaw director Kwei Chih-Hung was called in to attempt to imitate a Golden Harvest cheapie. At this point, Kwei was mainly known for exploitation films like Bamboo House of Dolls, The Bod Squad and Killer Snakes. He later moved on to the black magic genre culminating in the insane Boxer's Omen, his last film.The plot is a trifle about an obnoxious restaurant delivery boy causing trouble with some local bad guys for the cook who secretly knows kung fu, eventually learning some techniques and finally, with the cook, confronting the bad guys.Most of the film is taken up by extended comedy sequences with over the top facial expressions and rather lame slapstick. The fight scenes are actually decent with the guy playing the cook (the legendary stuntman Wah Yuen) doing some excellent leg work. Unfortunately what makes a Jacky Chan film work is his exceptional comic acting and there's no-one near his stature in this film.There are better kung fu comedies out there.