PRIDE'S DEADLY FURY

Because of the repeated inquiries by  the countless fans (just kiddin') of my dreaded outpourings on Chinese Mainland Wushu Cine of the 80s (yes, JRS ... this one goes out to you

), I'm hereby posting Part IV of the series. You asked for it...

Wu Lin Zhi

武林志

This movie was actually the first official (and therefore still somewhat timid) co-production between the People’s Republic of China and the British crown colony Hong Kong.  It was produced in 1982 by the Beijing Film Studio and released a year later by the Hong Kong distribution company Naam Fong 南方.

The film was selected as the Motion Picture of the Year by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, translated into 5 languages and released in the U. S. as The Honor of Dongfang Xu.

All the previous Wushu movies shot in the Chinese mainland from the late 70s on, including the first two films featuring Jet Li , had been exclusive Mainland ventures. But the huge success of The Shaolin Temple 少林寺 got Hong Kong investors interested, and so a number of commercially promising collaborations were bound to follow.

Truth be told, Deadly Fury 武林志 is not one of my personal favorites, although the movie holds several indisputable assets.

Above all, long-standing Beijing Wushu Team

北京武术队 coach Li Junfeng

李俊峰 in the title role & his real-life student from this very team, the fabulous Ge Chunyan 戈春艷, as the leading lady.

                                                  Li Junfeng                           Ge Chunyan

But the film smarts from so many weaknesses and lapses of taste that I can’t in good conscience rank it at the top of my list of Mainland Wushu movie highlights.

On the plus side: extensive martial arts training sequences & Wushu demonstrations by Li Junfeng & Ge Chunyan, with the latter unfortunately wasted throughout the entire movie... yes, we certainly would have loved to see more from this remarkable Wushu Amazon . At least, we get to admire her famous long-tassel swordplay 长穗剑(she used to be a gold medalist in this particular event).

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5XBr_xzh6w

Other than that,  Deadly Fury boasts some of the finest and most explicit Bagua Zhang 八卦掌 performances ever captured on film.

The action set pieces are pretty much real and – again - executed by genuine martial arts

athletes rather than popular movie stars. The trio of action directors abandoned special effects most of the time and kept much of the combat action halfway believable (apart from an unnecessary fast-rewind shot, when Li Junfeng leaps “up” a five-feet-tall Plum Blossom Stake). Another fly in the ointment, the obviously Chinese actors posing as Russian boxers... with the obligatory blazing red wigs and bushy mustaches . Doubtless, this is due to a lack of foreign actors available to the People’s Republic at the time (in addition to an overall low production value) and it gives the movie an annoying B-grade feel.

Nastrovia!

Sadly, in spite of the first-rate martial arts performers and their realistic approach, the fight choreography comes across a little lame on occasion. And as with many other Chinese martial arts flicks, the actors’ cringe-making heroics in Deadly Fury are pretty hard to endure, to boot (by the way, Li Junfeng was awarded a Chinese National Award for “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role”!).

Yup, it’s all black-and-white with a good helpin’ of nationalistic propaganda... pride and honor and patriotic dignity and all the stuff that makes people beat the shit out of each other... covered in a watery sauce of pseudo philosophy. But what the hell... I’ve seen worse.

At the end of the day, chopsockies are a bit like porn... we just don’t watch ‘em for the story, do we (of course, I NEVER watch 'em... porn, I mean... )? On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that even if the average movie-goer may not NEED a decent plot, not many viewers would actually MIND one, at least every once in a while (with chopsockies, not so much with porn). But I digress.

Another drawback: it’s next to impossible to get a good DVD version of the movie. You’ll either find it badly dubbed or in Chinese without subtitles, meaning that if you’re not fluent in Mandarin you’re likely to miss a lot of the nuances of the dialogue (or so I’m told).

The plot:

China 1916. Martial arts master Dong Fangxu (Li Junfeng) and his family roam around the country, trying to scrape a living by doing Wushu demonstrations in market places and village squares. This stirs the wrath of local hero He Dahai ( Li Deyu 李德玉). But alas, before they can settle their differences, He Dahai is lured into taking on “Russian Hercules” Datlov ( Ai Haiti

艾海提) in a no-holds-barred boxing match in Tianjin. Quiet Dong Fangxu is so peace-loving that he rather breaks his own arm than engaging in senseless violence, but the bloodthirsty & foul-playing barbarians eventually manage to make him lose his Taoist temper. As usual, the Chinese use their superior kungfu fighting skills against the brute force of the grunting & eye-rolling foreign devils. Hurrah!!!

Good vs. Evil

Gloss:

Wu Lin Zhi is particularly (or should I say only?) interesting because of its cast. Apart from Li Junfeng & Ge Chunyan, the first generation veteran Beijing opera star and celebrated actor of warrior roles 武生 Zhang Yunxi

張雲溪  plays the hoary but agile Taoist hermit “Magic Palm” Li.

Zhang Yunxi as "Magic Palm"

Li Junfeng, born in 1938 in Hebei province, is something like a living legend in Wushu circles. Along with Wu Bin

吴彬, he was one of the head coaches of the original Beijing Wushu Team. The list of his achievements & awards is endless, but it should be noted that other than being a chief coach of the Beijing Wushu Team for 14 years , he’s been also a professor at the Institute of Chinese Qigong, Chief Coach of the Philippines National Wushu Team , Commissioner of the China Wushu Association (CWA), and author of many books & publications on the subject of Chinese martial arts. He has appeared in three additional films, was a film action choreographer and hosted the television series “Learning Wushu”. In 2002 he moved to the U.S., accepting a position as a Qigong气功instructor at the Academy of Oriental Medicine in Austin, Texas.

His daughter Li Jing

李静 – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree - became a successful member of the Beijing Wushu Team and Taiji 太極拳National Champion of China (not to be confused with the  actress Li Jing, who also used to be a member of the Beijing team & who is a well-known Official Artist here on AnD... complicated stuff! ).

Ge Chunyan was among the first batch of the professional Wushu athletes that formed the original Beijing Wushu Team in 1978 & one of the top female Wushu competitors of the 80s. She has won gold medals for Bagua Zhang八卦掌 , Chen Style Taiji陳式太極拳, Long Tassle Sword长穗剑, 3-men weapon set sparring routine队练, and the Individual All Round Competition. She subsequently became the women’s team captain and eventually the head coach of the entire team. In 1985 she starred in another movie, Kung Fu Hero Wang Wu大刀王五.

Since 2004 she’s been living & teaching in Singapore , where she set up her own “Ba Fang Wushu Training Center”. She is married and has 2 kids.

The stunt crew for Wu Lin Zhi was exclusively put together from the near-complete professional Wushu teams of Beijing & Hebei.

Other titles for Wu Lin Zhi:

Deadly Fury

Pride’s Deadly Fury (HK)

The Honor of Dongfang Xu (US)

Le Champion de Tianjin (France)

Duell mit harten Faeusten (Germany)

Director: Zhang Huaxun張華勛

Action Director: Zhang Wenguang  張文廣,  Men Huifeng 門惠豐, An Tianrong安天榮

Producer: Feng Zengdu 封增杜, Yu Xueshu 于學書 

Film Company: Beijing Film Studio北京电影制片厂

Starring: Li Junfeng (as Dong Fangxu), Li Deyu (as He Dahai), Zhang Yunxi (as “Magic Palm” Li), Ge Chunyan (as Gao Lianzhi), Ai Haiti (as Datlov)