![]() To say he was prolific at this stage of his career is an understatement, clearly adopting an approach of saying “yes” to everything and often appearing in a different film every month! While free from the shackles of a studio system, the results of his labours are, of course, mixed. ![]() Rather than stay on board with the biggest film studio in the country, he broke contract with the Shaws and went to Taiwan to make lower-budget independent movies. The Chinese Boxerįrom there though, Wang’s career took a weird turn. Imagine Scorsese or Coppola doing all this and you’ll see what I mean. To conceive and develop this, direct it and also perform – to high degrees of athleticism – most of it is a level of technical and artistic (not to mention physical) skill that puts so many western filmmakers to shame. It’s tragic, really, that martial arts cinema is so frowned upon by the criterati and that these movies – despite being huge hits at the time – are now seen only as ‘cult’ material, because honestly, the effort that Wang Yu put into this film and the quality of the results put it up there with the greats in any genre. Some of the most beautiful brutality put on film – especially as Wang Yu avoids the typical ADR thwacking sounds of later kung fu cinema and you really do hear every dull, fleshy thud of every punch like it’s real. Wang Yu single-handedly taking on a casino full of weapon-toting bad dudes probably still has Tarantino crying into his Crazy 88 Funko Pops over his failure to imitate it, and the penultimate sequences in the snow are visually spectacular. ![]() There are some truly bravura sequences here. So it’s a testament to The Chinese Boxer that it doesn’t feel at all prototypical but, instead, stands up as a masterpiece even now. It’s hard to imagine, given the thousands of imitations that would come out over the next two decades, but this kind of hand-to-hand combat movie really wasn’t common at all in 1970. The plot – corrupted martial artists starting a war with an honourable martial arts school – is one that would be recycled many times but here it’s a simple Manichean storyline that provides an emotional backbone for some of the most incredible, groundbreaking martial arts sequences ever made. It was The Chinese Boxer (1970) that truly defined Wang Yu, not just as a performer, but as a writer, director and trailblazer. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to see at the time but it was the first Hong Kong film to make HK$1m at the domestic box office, so the numbers speak for themselves. It’s still a joy to watch him fight with one arm, all these years later. It started a subgenre of its own, with one-armed fighters taking on all comers, but arguably no one ever topped the razor-sharp athletic choreography of Wang Yu in One-Armed Swordsman and its many sequels and spin-offs. Lots and lots of gore, spurting limbs lopped off left, right and centre. Wang’s big breakthrough came with Chang Cheh’s The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), a film of almost unprecedented violence for its time, that blew up the box office with its high-octane mix of karmic philosophy, Chanbara-style swordfights and gore. ![]() However, by the late Sixties, the Chinese film landscape was shifting and directors like Chang Cheh were bringing in new influences and laying down foundations for what would become the booming kung fu industry of the 1970s. The public loved him and his wuxia movies were big domestic hits. It was clear he had star power, mixing tight onscreen choreography skills, classical good looks and a heroic charisma. Unlike many Shaw Brothers Studios martial arts stars who started off small, Wang Yu’s career kicked off with a bang, with leading roles in a slew of wuxia/swordplay classics like Magnificent Trio (1965) and Temple of the Red Lotus (1965). He did, however, leave behind a unique cinematic legacy and some fifty years’ worth of performances to treasure. It’s a sad truth that even larger-than-life legends have to die sometime and, on April 5th 2022, Jimmy Wang Yu passed away. If you’ve watched more than a handful of martial arts films, you’ll have seen Jimmy Wang Yu and, if you’ve seen Jimmy Wang Yu, you’ll know that he was one of the greats. Looking back at the extraordinary career of the pioneering martial arts movie superstar.
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