REVIEW - The Man From Hong Kong (1975)

The Man From Hong Kong

Australia / Hong Kong - 1975

Directed by - Brian Trenchard-Smith

Starring - Yu Wang, George Lazenby, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Roger Ward

Color / 111 Min / Rated R for violence and gore, nudity, and profanity

Inspector Leng (Yu Wang) is a hotshot Hong Kong narcotics officer chosen to travel to Sydney to interrogate and then extradite a Chinese drug courier captured by Australian police. But when the courier is assassinated on his way to the courthouse to keep him from squealing, Inspector Leng goes apeshit and embarks on a monumental path of destruction in order to get to the leader of the drug cartel, Mr. Wilton (a mustachioed George Lazenby). Along the way, Leng is assisted by a couple of Aussie detectives, Taylor (Roger Ward) and Grosse (Hugh Keays-Byrne, aka Grunchlik from Farscape for my sci-fi nerds out there). Since he's a thrilling man of danger and excitement, Leng also manages to elicit a couple of shags from some young beauties while he's at it.

In theory, I should really adore an Ozploitation movie like The Man From Hong Kong. It has so many elements that I usually tend to enjoy in action trash flicks: George f'n Lazenby for a start, but not only that, it's clearly a James Bond pastiche, it has some excellent fight scenes, some wonderful action set pieces (including a completely barmy car chase that would make Death Proof blush with envy and a foot chase through the back alleys of Sydney that goes on for about ten freaking minutes), loads of hammy dialogue, an appearance by Sammo Hung, some sweet 1970's cheese on the soundtrack (seriously, you haven't lived until you've heard the awfulness of the song entitled "A Man is a Man is a Man" by Deena Greene), and you get to see Rosalind Speirs' boobies. What's not to like here?

It wouldn't be a kung-fu movie without a big fight inside a dojo, would it?

Well, there's the story for one thing. The Man From Hong Kong has a stupid plot. I know, I know. I pay too much attention to the story in these kind of movies sometimes, that's why they're often referred to as 'mindless entertainment' but I just can't help myself from thinking, even when I'm dealing with pure brain candy. Why, why, WHY does Inspector Leng want to bring down Wilton so bad? It makes no flippin' sense. Leng just snaps and embarks on a Charles Bronson styled revenge quest, leaving bodies and untold amounts of collateral damage in his wake, just to get to Wilton. You might think, well, obviously this character is a devout champion of the law, a kung-fu version of Batman, and simply must bring law breakers to justice. That would work for me, but Leng straight-up murders his adversary at the climax after forcing a confession out of him under the duress of torture. Yeah, that'll hold up in court. Oh wait, it doesn't matter about the confession because you FUCKING MURDERED HIM! The bumbling Australian police show up and, instead of throwing a set of cuffs on Leng for killing god knows how many and blowing up cars and buildings, they all have a good laugh about it together! Indeed, the Aussie police force seems to be perfectly content to let a foreigner with no jurisdiction whatsoever roam about their country and do as he pleases. Hot Shots took itself more seriously than this movie.

It would have been so easy to fix too. Just say Leng is an international spy and I'd buy into him prowling around other countries whilst chucking grenades and crashing cars. Then all you'd have to do is insert even just a bare minimum of dialogue explaining why Leng wants Wilton's head on a pole. I don't care if he date raped your sister, ran over your dog with his car, or picked on you in junior high school, just give the audience SOMETHING to go on. To be fair, this was Brian Trenchard-Smith's first movie as a director, and he clearly hadn't realized that audiences do occasionally want some potatos with their meat. You can shoot an amazing action sequence, but without at least a shread of story and even half-assed characterization, the audience isn't ever going to give a damn who lives and who dies. The sense of danger is lost when you don't give a shit about the characters.

I don't know about you, but I'm cheering for Unnamed Aussie Hoodlum #14 here.

Which brings me to my other major beef with The Man From Hong Kong. Leading man Yu Wang (aka 'Jimmy Wang Yu' overseas) is a charisma vaccum. He doesn't have the badassery of a Bruce Lee, the mystique of a Sonny Chiba, nor the charm of a Jackie Chan. Of course, these kind of martial arts movie stars don't just come around every day, but Yu Wang doesn't even show a brief glimpse of these qualities. Even if you're not comparing him to other martial arts stars, Yu Wang is about on the same level as John Stamos in Born to Ride. Yes. As terrible as Uncle Jessie. Wang is positively cardboard in most of his scenes, whilst the 'love scenes' where Wang attempts to be all sensitive after finishing up kicking some henchman's face off are an absolute joke. I already find it difficult to root for anybody going up against George Lazenby in a movie unless he's Kojak, but I'm pretty sure I'd find it impossible to root for Yu Wang as the hero in anything. The tales of Yu Wang's arrogance and bad attitude on set only make things worse. Apparently, the man thought he was brought in to direct the movie, and often tried bullying tactics on the first-timer Trenchard-Smith in an effort for Wang to get *his* vision of the film on screen. As a result of this, practically no one working on this film in front of or behind the camera liked the man. It's little wonder his star burned out in Asian cinema only a few short years after The Man From Hong Kong wrapped production.

Amusingly, director Trenchard-Smith makes a cameo appearance as one of Lazenby's goons and has a fight scene with Yu Wang. More than one source claims that Trenchard-Smith started throwing real punches and the fight became legit. I can't imagine why...

Officer Grosse sure hopes the 70's never end.

Worst of all, this movie is alarmingly short of the Laz. I tuned in to this flick expecting plenty of Lazenby, goddamn it. Not an unreasonable expectation given that he's one of the top billed stars in the film, but what I got left me wanting more. He doesn't even show up until almost forty minutes into the film, and the scenes featuring the character Wilton are few and far between. George does get some of the best dialogue humdingers though. His trash talking to Inspector Leng ("I know your martial arts.") is spine-tinglingly bad, but the shit eating grin on Lazenby's face in addition to his porn mustache makes it a highlight.

Even though I'm well aware the film made quite a massive take in both the Australian and Asian box offices (less so in the US, where it was renamed The Dragon Flies for some inexplicable reason), I'm just not very impressed. Like I said, the fight scenes are quite good, the chases are very impressively done, and there's a level of realistic violence that you hardly got to see in 70's martial arts films, but they're just scenes with little cohesiveness to bring them all together. You could watch it purely for the action and explosions, or if you're really hurting for a new James Bond parody to check out, but otherwise I'd have to say pass on The Man from Hong Kong.

1.5 / 5

I will now leave you with the worst love song montage in the history of cinema. "We Have All the Time in the World" this is not.