Hero of the Wild (1977)

Good movie but grossly overrated

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Chan Sing was one of the original "real deal" kung fu movie stars in that he had a black belt in the karate style Goju-Ryu. In his early films he brought the sai, a traditional Okinawan martial arts weapon to the screen. Born in Thailand and looking a bit dark and with a moustache he made a perfect villain in his early Shaw Brothers movies. In my opinion this movie is one of his best. Unfortunately the best copy I ever came across was a digital file made from a VHS tape dubbed in English. The picture is sharp enough to watch on a modern wide screen television but it is not wide screen. I would love to find a laser disk version but none seem to have made it out of Hong Kong. The story starts with a creative twist on the old revenge plot. Chan Sing kills a man and his son swears revenge. Instead of getting twenty years older and meanwhile the kid becomes a martial arts master and then comes back to kill him, Chan Sing takes the revengeful son under his wing to teach him martial arts. I'm thinking his motive is that in twenty years they will have bonded and then the kid will not want to kill him for revenge – problem solved. Later he accepts an unusual murder contract in that politics and patriotism become part of the story. Then he stops a girl from being taken to forced prostitution by fighting and paying her contract. A challenger appears and Chan Sing feels he is too young so the two kids battle. His student loses but survives. Lo Lieh is behind this. After the kid heals up they fight again as Chan Sing and Lo Lieh watch. This time Chan Sing's student wins. Next Lo Lieh fights Chan Sing and I was disappointed with this fight. Lo Lieh is also one of the first – if not the very first – original "real deal" kung fu movie stars. He learned mostly karate in his teen years in Indonesia. This could have been a unique karateka versus karateka fight but it was not choreographed that way. I guess they just never thought of it. Instead, Lo Lieh fights without honor and they both live to fight another day. On the way to the brothel, Got Siui-Bo gets his cameo. I call him respectfully the fat man of martial arts movies. He made 284 movies from 1964 to 1996 and with his body habitus he only suited the role of the fat guy. Despite that limitation he added true emotion from grief to comedy to many of his performances and often stole the scene in brief appearances. Chan Sing then finds the woman he freed from the brothel yet working at the brothel. The real treat at the brothel is Doris Lung Chung- Erh, whom I lovingly named Crazy Doris. Check out her personal life and you might agree with me. They fight, using stunt doubles only for the acrobatics. This sets up the fight for Chan Sing versus Hwang Jang-Lee. Chan Sing is defeated but lives and the kid has his climactic moment where he decides not to revenge. The focus shifts to the kid fighting everyone starting with Crazy Doris and company. Of course, the good guys win and bad guys lose.

More bone crunching martial arse hi jinks here, full of bad dubbing, questionable antics, and bad wigs. Grrr. I'll get you! Some champion challenges another champion to a fight on a beach (I'll get you!), causing the other guy to kill himself. This guy's son goes nuts (I'll get you!) but the losing champion makes the winning champion promise that he'll look after his son and also take down some Manchurian spies who also happen to be champion fighters, so now the winning champion has to raise this guy and teach his kung fu in order for the losing champion's son to grow up strong and kill him. Makes sense so far, eh?So the champion guys also gets hired to kill a guy who turns out to be the guy he was going to kill anyway, plus the guy that hired him was wearing a mask so we'll have to wait to find out who he was. He's also training this young guy to kill him, which seems to involve killing a dog (for real? Who knows in these films) because kindness is not allowed or something, and now and again rescuing this girl from a life of prostitution.While story wise this is kind of boring jazz (not to mention confusing, as it seems to me a bunch of innocent people were beaten up and killed), there's plenty of martial arse battles to watch. For some reason the version I watched was split into two separate parts. It's okay, don't sweat it if you don't see it.

Forget all about what some other reviewers say about this being a "decent" or above average Kung Fu film. The picture is simply awesome.. Naturally, the plot has it's flaws.. but it's essentially better than most Kung Fu movies of the time and at times really interesting and somehow riveting. The best thing about the movie is of course the fights.. and I tell you, they are simply top-notch! Sing Chen and Hwang Jang Lee really shine as the best fighters of the nation and Jang Lee proves again why he is the best kicker the world has ever seen. The choreography is absolutely insane, but I guess that's what you'll have to expect when Yuen Biao is credited as the action director (he has a small role as one of Jang Lee's grandsons as well, and honestly.. who do you think was doubling for all the other cast when needed??) I didn't expect that much from this movie.. but it's a fact.. Kung Fu films don't get any better than this.

This is a thoroughly predictable if reasonably well made kung fu quickie, more noticeable for its cast (Lo Lieh and a young Corey Yuen) than for anything else. Of course, it's hard to judge the true merits of this film based on the television print that I recently viewed: a horribly pan and scanned print with typically poor dubbing (boy, that Australian guy was busy back then!)and the commercial breaks left intact--at several points, the screen went blank for thirty seconds, even though this aired on a commercial-free public television station! The story is the same old stuff: young apprentice learns at the hand of the master, young lady arrives mid-picture to kick some ass...you've seen it many times before. The choreography seems a tick above average--though it is, of course, badly compromised by the pan and scan hi-jinks--and there's a bad guy in a red mask who's mildly diverting. All in all, though, not one I would recommend--unless a widescreen DVD arrives on the scene.