|
FEARLESS
HYENA
AKA:
Crazy Monkey ||
Revenge Of The Dragon
Year:
1979 Reviewer: Mike
Banner
This
was Jackie's last film under his contract with producer Lo Wei.
After his huge success with 'Drunken
Master' and 'Snake In The
Eagle's Shadow' for Seasonal Films, Jackie was allowed to
write, direct and choreograph this feature.
Shing
Lung (Jackie Chan) is a lazy and mischievous young man. He
lives with his grandfather (James Tien) who teaches him the
family kung fu. He's told by his grandfather to find a job and
ends up working at a shady kung fu school fighting all comers.
Meanwhile, villainous General Yen (Yen Si Kuan) is roaming the
countryside murdering anyone who opposes his clan. After Yen
kills the grandfather, Shing Lung must train with his new
master (Hui Lou Chen) to exact his revenge.
As
you may be able to tell from the above synopsis this has many
of the elements familiar to the old school kung fu genre.
Films of this nature, to me, are like blues or folk standards.
The song structures remain basically the same but each artist
brings their own style and ideas to the piece. Unlike the Lo
Wei directed movies Jackie had been making previously where
he's rather stern and humourless, here he's more like the
Jackie that would become one of the world's biggest action
stars. Directing himself he gets to showcase his own brand of
charm, naivety and bravado in a film full of comedy and
action.
'Fearless
Hyena' is split pretty much straight down the middle. For the
first 45 minutes Jackie is basically having fun. He gets some
light-hearted training, has a failed job interview at an
undertakers with Dean Shek (making a thankfully brief cameo)
and dresses up and mugs for all he's worth as a goofy looking
pauper and a woman. These scenes are amusing rather than laugh
out loud funny but they're thankfully never grating or at the
expense of the action. At the halfway point of the movie Shing
Lung's grandfather is killed. After this the comedy slips away
somewhat as Jackie gets more serious. There are some
impressive training sequences including Jackie doing 14
consecutive upside down sit-ups as he develops his new
'emotional kung fu' in preparation for his showdown with the
white haired villain, Yen.
The
action is excellent throughout the film. It's intricately
choreographed and very well performed. Most of it is open hand
combat but there also some brilliant weapons fights,
especially the penultimate fight between Jackie and Yen's
spear wielding henchmen. The final fight between Chan and Yen
is a very good ending with Jackie typically ditching
traditional kung fu to fight with his own self created kung fu
style. The only slight problem is that the previous fight is
so good that the ending is a little bit of an anti-climax.
The
direction, cinematography and writing is nothing special and
the film is certainly not up there with the best in Chan's
canon of work but with excellent action, a few chuckles and
Jackie's charm the film is an enjoyable watch.
|
