The Buddhist Fist (1980)

THE BUDDHIST FIST is a fast and furious action comedy from the great Hong Kong director Yuen Woo-ping. It stars Yuen Shun-Yee who plays a novice barber's apprentice who is soon drawn into a murder plot when his childhood friend is framed for murder and he decides to investigate, subsequently becoming a target himself. THE BUDDHIST FIST is far more than your typical Jackie Chan rip-off, with a fresh look and feel that sets it apart from the rest.The opening scene of the movie features DRUNKEN MASTER's Simon Yuen in an amusing cameo and I've read that he died shortly afterwards which means that his performance is limited to this one moment. However, the rest of the Yuen clan do appear, including Yuen Cheung-Yan playing a gang leader. Lee Hoi San turns up in one of those stock bad guy roles which he was always so adept at playing. THE BUDDHIST FIST follows the usual template for these productions, with non-stop comedy hijinks in the first part giving way to some serious action in the second.The setting of the barber shop allows for some great comic set-pieces and the one involving the cross-eyed character actor so familiar from the genre is my favourite. The plot's twists are enough to keep the viewer involved up until the climax, which is where the strong fight choreography comes in and keeps you gripping. While THE BUDDHIST FIST isn't one of Woo-ping's all-time classics, it certainly ticks all of the right boxes as an effective kung fu film.

Many Westerners feel that Buddhism ought to be a "perfect" religion - everyone adhering to it ought to be some sort of saint or savant. Having been a Buddhist for 15 years, and having spent considerable amount of time with Buddhists of many different sects, I am sorry to report that we are pretty much like all other Earthlings, and our religion is a faith in the possibility of improvement, not the achievement of perfection.Yuen Woo-Ping's "Buddhist Fist is probably his masterwork of the "old School" Hong Kong action film era, but it may also be his finest dramatic achievement in any era. Without spoiling the film, I warn the reader that the film hinges on a cultural anomaly; it is possible in the East to be committed to a Buddhist monastery as a child without having spiritually converted to it. This means pretty much in the East what it once did in the West, when Roman monasticism was at its height: repression, rage, hypocrisy. These are clearly not vices Westerners like to associate with Buddhism, and they aren't particularly admitted in the East, either. Consequently, for Yuen Woo Ping to make this the core issue of this drama took considerable courage on his part, and it shows forth in the dedicated acting of its leading performers. There are weak points to the film, to be sure: Yuen's father, Simon Yuen, of "Drunken Master" fame, died during the making of the film (as apparently he did during the making of at least a half-dozen others!), and a beefy part for him had to be trimmed and rewritten for completion by someone else; this also weakens some of the oddball humor that some viewers find annoying about the film, but which, taken on its own terms, is quite enjoyable. (I suppose one really has to have a grasp on Cantonese theatrical traditions to appreciate this.) But the core drama of the film, despite all the stereotypes en-framing it, remains strong after more than twenty years, because of the myriad conflicting human emotions it evokes.Oh, and of course, the martial arts happen to be absolutely exquisite in choreography and performance.But it is the drama that finally preserves this film - and I expect it will do so for another generation or two.

The Buddhist Fist (1980) is most certainly not among the better exponents of its genre. It has some decent and fairly entertaining kung fu here and there, but the story is generally boring. The motivation of the bad guy is non-existent. The terrible attempts at humor mostly fall totally flat and are generally misplaced. I'll admit, though, that the Fat Master is quite entertaining, and will make anyone smile with his unbeatable kung fu (and chess fu!).Story and production-wise, the movie warrants a "5" rating, but I will raise that to a solid "6" because the entertainment value is fair and the movie has an amazing finish.The final fight is superb. It's like an inventory of all the "Buddha" styles; "Sleeping Buddha", "Drunken Buddha", etc., and it's of a good length. This sort of scenes is what Asian movies can do that Western movies can't, because no Westerners have this kind of devotion to and tradition for martial arts in the movies.Special mention should also go to the guy who plays Boss Chang (the one with a big and a small foot). He's one cool dude, though his role here is nothing much. Catch him as a very cool monk in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin instead.

This is the best kung fu film ever, no doubt. Absurdly complex fight sequences, kung fu monks, stunning fisting scenes. Don't ask me what the plot was, I just know this film has to be seen to be believed. The guy who did the fight scenes also engineered the fight sequences in The Matrix, but this film is light years beyond Keanu Reeves. It HAS to be seen.