The Fearless Young Boxer (1979)

Father and son (Peter Chang Chi-Long) are walking and father spots his enemy, Casanova Wong. CW wants a gold plate and information. They fight and dad is killed. The son has no kung fu. Soon after the kid is learning kung fu along with a girl. While street performing the kid spots CW. His teacher warns him it is too soon for revenge and to keep training. Later Lee Kwan does a disco dance to win the affection of the girl but she is not interested. Going for wine our guy meets Stumpy who picks his pocket for the gold plate. CW suspects our guy but needs to provoke him to fight as if that would establish his identity. After being kicked out of the troupe he hooks up with the fortune teller to continue to learn martial arts. There is inconsistency regarding how Casanova Wong could possibly know Peter Chang and vice versa. Since this is dubbed in English that might be the problem instead. Regardless the viewer easily can see it will all come down to a final fight between the two and the incidences in the middle seem to only delay the confrontation not build any suspense or other plot structure. Despite that it never gets so far as to drag as many small fights keep the action going.Chan Wai-Lau gets killed off by Casanova Wong before the final fight but he is an actor worthy of mention. He played in over 100 movies mostly as a fighting stunt man (including a good Simon Yuen knock off) despite his small size. In fact, because of his small size he even played an old lady. The fights in this movie were all good. In addition to the good choreography and execution each fight had moves emphasizing the personality of the fighters and the story situation. That extra bit makes the difference between just another fight scene and something memorable. This movie goes even further with the use of the set in the final fight. Typically the final fight in a martial arts movie would be on top a dusty hill or some other featureless landscape. In years to come Jackie Chan would use set pieces for his final fights. I now wonder if this movie was the first use ever. Here the barn is used as part of the fight, the bags of grain, the ropes, the poles, the rafters, and such are all part of the fight choreography.I rate this above average and recommend it for all fans of the genre.

Fearless Young Boxer, aka Method Man, aka The Avenging Boxer I enjoyed this film more than the other reviewers. Peter Chang (Chen) is an underrated actor whose acrobatic ability matches Yuen Biao in many ways. The fight scenes are well done, showing off Casanova's amazing kicks and the final fight scene in the warehouse is surely one of the best ever filmed (a worthy rival to OUATC I). The plot is simplistic : Shao Lung (Peter Chen) joins an acrobat troupe to improve his kung fu skills in order to take on the merciless killer, Wu Pa Feng (Casanova), who took his father's life in a duel over a badge bestowing leadership on a criminal group, and I agree the humour is crudely done but just watch these guys in action.

Recently re-released in the UK under the US title, "Method Man", FEARLESS YOUNG BOXER is a prime example of old school kung fu that I saw years ago on VHS video. It has the standard plot of a wandering assassin Wa Pa Fong (Ca Sa Fa) who's searching for the surviving members of a rival kung fu school. The father of hero Shao Lung (Peter Chen) is killed in the opening sequence of the movie, but manages to pass on the gold emblem of the school to his son. Much confusion then arises when pickpocket "Stumpy" swipes the emblem and is seen by Wa Pa Fong.The middle section of the film gets bogged down is some pretty broad 'comedy" routines that include a chubby guy disco dancing, but it's back to solid action in the final duel between Ca Sa Fa and Peter Chen. Ca Sa Fa in particular is a superb martial artist and offered a pretty good turn in the earlier Sammo Hung movie WARRIORS TWO.Worth a look for the skills of Ca Sa Fa, but if possible avoid the terrible UK DVD which is the dubbed version.

There is not much of an story. Only the usealy kung fu revenge plot, and, also quite common for these kind of movies very thin, characters. But what's even worse, there is a lot of very dumb and simple "humour" in the first hour of the film. After the first hour however the movie gets beter quikly! The last 30 minutes are just great fightscenes which make up for the disapointing first hour. And an absolute highpoint is ofcourse the last ficht in which Shao Long and Shao Ling team up to fight the contractkiller who killed Shao Long's father, this fight is staged in an old barn and reminded me a bit to the last fight in Once upon a time in China ! Only for kung fu fanatics I think.