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Johnnie To’s judo film with Aaron Kwok and Louis Koo, Throw Down, Chow Yun-fat playing against type in Wild Search: 3 neglected Hong Kong action movies

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Johnnie To’s judo film with Aaron Kwok and Louis Koo, Throw Down, Chow Yun-fat playing against type in Wild Search: 3 neglected Hong Kong action movies


Known for urban crime films like the classic City on Fire, Lam set much of Wild Search in a village in Hong Kong’s New Territories, a creative choice which gave it an unusual rural tone.

Moreover, while the film did feature a lot of gun violence – it would have been difficult to get financial backing for a crime film without that in 1989 – the shoot-outs were toned down, even though they were still too exaggerated to be described as realistic.

Rather than making a “bullet ballet”, Lam made a relationship drama set against the backdrop of a crime story.

It’s tempting to think that if the economics of filmmaking had permitted it, his focus would have shifted even more towards the relationship between a cop and the family he is trying to protect.

Stunning action, Hollywood gloss: Johnnie To changed Hong Kong crime films

“Lam’s Wild Search came after the intense descent into darkness of his On Fire movies – City on Fire, Prison on Fire, and School on Fire – and so it felt like a welcome breath of fresh air,” says Grady Hendrix, author of These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America.

The story revolves around Chow Yun-fat’s depressed cop character, who is trying to break up an arms smuggling ring. When the mother of a three-year-old girl (played brilliantly by Chan Cheuk-yan) is killed during a police action, Chow takes it upon himself to help the girl’s aunt (Cherie Chung Chor-hung) find the child’s biological father.

The action shifts to village life in the New Territories as Chow and Chung’s characters start to get close. But the arms dealers – led by Paul Chun Pui as a vicious crime boss posing as a charitable businessman – are on Chow’s tail.

Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung in a still from Wild Search. Photo: handout

Chow was known for playing cool heroic characters in the late 1980s, but here he is depressed, he drinks, he loses his temper, and he makes mistakes.

“If anyone was going to do something new with Chow Yun-fat’s or Cherie Chung’s images, it was going to be Lam,” notes Hendrix.

“He really does take them in new directions, shading Chow’s ‘tough guy’ persona with self-destructive tendencies, and making pop star Cherie Chung convincing as a simple country girl.”

The village scenes still look unusual today. “Under the laid-back scenes of village life in the New Territories, and Chow Yun-fat bonding with an adorable little kid in a tutu, there’s a dark current of violence and a critique of village life as small-minded and claustrophobic,” Hendrix notes.

Ringo Lam pictured in 1990. Photo: SCMP

“You’re never allowed a fresh start, and you’ll never escape the shadows of your past.”

The Spiritual Boxer (1975)

Martial arts maestro Lau Kar-leung’s The Spiritual Boxer is often credited with starting the kung fu comedy genre which swept the box office towards the end of the 1970s.

What’s more, unlike in Drunken Master, which invented a comedic drunken style of kung fu, Lau makes the martial arts in The Spiritual Boxer authentic.

Lau’s aim as a filmmaker was always to represent the southern styles of kung fu as authentically as he could, and here he depicts some of the five animal styles of southern Shaolin kung fu with great care.

Lau was already a legendary martial arts choreographer before he made The Spiritual Boxer, his directorial debut. With Tong Kai, he had choreographed director Chang Cheh’s martial arts classics at Shaw Brothers.
Wong Yu (left) and Lin Chen-chi in a still from The Spiritual Boxer.

When Chang launched his own film company in Taiwan, Lau went with him, but after a highly publicised falling out, Lau returned to Hong Kong to direct The Spiritual Boxer for Shaws.

The title reflects a mystical kind of kung fu that was espoused by the Boxers during the time of the Boxer Rebellion. By channelling Taoist deities, exponents of the form were said to be impervious to pain or injury.

After a marvellous introductory depiction of spiritual kung fu in the Qing dynasty, performed by top martial arts stars Chen Kuan-tai and Ti Lung, the story flips forward in time.

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Wong Yu plays a con man who tricks people into thinking he can do spiritual kung fu by using special effects. But he later sees the error of his dishonest ways, and uses his real kung fu skills to defend a village from bandits.

“You can already see the formation of many of the elements that would become Lau’s trademarks in his subsequent, more mature works,” says film historian Frank Djeng.

“There’s the marvellous prologue/opening sequence that emphasises the historical aspect of the film’s theme and the importance of tradition, and the theme that having good morals and doing good for others is the highest spiritual achievement.”

Lau Kar-leung at the Golden Bauhinia Awards ceremony in Hong Kong in 1996. Photo: SCMP

“There’s also the marvellously choreographed kung fu action that fully utilises Wong Yu’s talents as both a daft, charming comedian and a great martial artist,” Djeng notes.

“This was really the starting point for Lau, and with his next film Challenge of the Masters just a year later, he proved himself to be one of the best martial arts directors in Hong Kong,” Djeng adds.

Throw Down (2004)

Twenty years ago, Johnnie To Kei-fung’s films were either auteur crime dramas or big commercial pictures; Throw Down was neither.
Instead it was a highly personal, almost abstract, film about judo that was conceived as a tribute to Japanese legend Akira Kurosawa and his first movie, Sanshiro Sugata (Judo Saga).

Throw Down does have a plotline – in fact, it has a few – but it is very dispersed, and To focuses more on the overall spirit of redemption than narrative.

Assisted by martial arts director Yuen Bun, and a judo adviser, To also delights in showing some realistic judo bouts on the screen. Judo, a throwing and grappling form that is inelegant to watch, is unusual in Hong Kong martial arts films.

(From left) Cherrie Ying, Louis Koo and Aaron Kwok in a still from Throw Down. Photo: handout
The story features Louis Koo Tin-lok as a down and out former judo master who is being prodded to reclaim his former glory by the upstart played by Aaron Kwok Fu-shing, who keeps challenging him to a bout.
He finally agrees to fight a local judo legend, played by Tony Leung Ka-fai, to redeem himself – and we learn that he had abandoned martial arts because he was going blind.

“Buried inside all the jokes and lighthearted moments of Throw Down is a movie about accepting your fate and living the life you’re given as best you can,” says Hendrix.

Johnnie To at an interview with the Post in 2004. Photo: SCMP

Throw Down is To’s favourite of his own movies, and he’s always surprised that more people don’t talk about it. He was trying to do something really new, and he was perplexed that audiences didn’t get it,” Hendrix says.

In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.

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