Two Martial Arts Films: Russian Raid (2020) & Winners and Sinners (1983)

In its own way, the martial arts movie is as broad a church as anything. Other genres have their stock situations and standard plot beats, but the only beats martial arts cinema cares about are the ones delivered to the side of a goon’s skull. As long as the fighting is acrobatic enough, a martial arts film can be about anything, made in any style – and this is without taking into account the evolution of martial arts as a discipline. The currently-huge Mixed Martial Arts fighting style obviously looks nothing like the balletic, fantastical martial arts showcased in classic wuxia films, but its cinematic impact is impossible to dismiss. The latest evidence arrives in the form of Russian Raid, the directorial debut of Denis Kryuchkov, released on Blu-Ray by Eureka Video.

It begins with a flashback to its hero Nikita’s past as a Spetsnaz operative, on the trail of an arms dealer who’s been “working on seriously bad stuff since the 1990s”. The ’90s are occasionally invoked here as a lawless wasteland of disaster capitalism, quite different from how the decade is remembered in Britain or America, and when we catch up with Nikita in the present day he’s adapted disturbingly well to the privatised murk. He’s working as a mercenary-for-hire, indifferent to the morality of his employers, hired to take on the private security force at a local factory. It’s a mission that unexpectedly returns him to the orbit of the dark side of the Russian state.

On paper, Russian Raid is a daring political thriller, full of double-crosses and hidden allegiances. On screen, as the second word of the title implies, it’s rather more Gareth Evans than John le Carré. Cast members like Kirill Sarychev and Vladimir Mineev were hired not for their skill at portraying high-level duplicity, more because they are, respectively, holder of the current world record for powerlifting and world heavyweight kickboxing champion. I wouldn’t suggest that made them bad screen presences – god, who would dare? – but rather that they, like pretty much everyone in Russian Raid, concentrate more on dealing out savage violence than getting inside the fascinating cynicism of the film’s core plot.

Is that such a bad thing for a martial arts movie, though? It becomes slightly wearing over the course of the film’s 103 minutes, never really achieving the breathless rush of The Raid. But it still has plenty of impressive individual set-pieces, with Kryuchkov’s camera wisely keeping its distance from the frequent, ferocious beat-downs. (If nothing else, Russian Raid confirms Pierre Morel’s signature “two inches from the action” style of action cinematography is mercifully dead and buried) There are fun, uniquely Russian flourishes like the tracksuited hooligans who spend their downtime talking about the private lives of Pushkin and Byron. The cultural novelty dissipates, though, once you realise most of the cast seem to be auditioning to play the smirking Russian heavy in a Hollywood movie.

Which is not a bad career decision, but there are more interesting ways to be a martial arts star. Ivan Kotik, who plays Nikita, knows this – he’s worked in China and Hong Kong on films with Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow. Granted, The Iron Mask and The Mermaid might not be the zenith of those action legends’ careers, but the fact that actors like Kotik still head East to be in them is testament to those countries’ unshakeable status as the Mecca of the martial arts movie. Anyone wondering why – or anyone looking for a reminder – should head for Eureka’s other new martial arts Blu-Ray release, The Lucky Stars 3-Film Collection.

Russian Raid has precisely one moment of charm, when Nikita Kologrivyy yells “That shot was cool!” in a way that produces brief ambiguity as to whether he’s talking about a punch or a camera angle. Winners and Sinners, the first of the Lucky Stars series, is nothing but charm. It begins with a dizzying rush of botched crimes, whose specifics are only important inasmuch as they produce great gags (I howled at the unfortunate way in which one is caught by a police van) and get the central quintet of characters in jail together.

Those five are director Sammo Hung as Teapot, John Shum as Curly, Richard Ng as Exhaust Pipe, Charlie Chin as Vaseline and Stanley Fung as Rookie. They’re joined by Cherie Chung as Shirley, Curly’s sister whose beauty obsesses the other gang members, and pursued by a CID officer played by Jackie Chan. Chan’s own directorial work famously indulges his fascination with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, but Winners and Sinners suggests Hung is more a fan of the Three Stooges (Curly, who appears to have visited Malcolm Gladwell’s hairdresser, might be named as a tribute) and the Marx Brothers. Like the Marxes, the Lucky Stars gang are utterly indiscriminate in causing as much chaos as possible wherever they go. There’s a schoolboyish innocence to their behaviour, an innocence that neutralises the potentially problematic amount of leering at Chung. Even at this moment of heightened sensitivity around feminist issues, you can’t really see Exhaust Pipe as a threat to her, not when his big plan involves spying on her in the bath by turning himself invisible. You will be surprised to hear this plan does not work, although it goes wrong in a very funny way, which is all it needs to do.

Hung directs this as a live-action comic strip, not a million miles from the Coen brothers in Hudsucker Proxy mode. The Triads who the Lucky Star gang cross paths with are established as a threat not by their sadism – that would be an unconscionable mood-killer – but by filming them in a hyper-stylised noir register. With its three uses of the muted trumpet “wah wah waaaah” sound effect, Winners and Sinners sometimes feels like a slightly guilty pleasure, but as soon as the stunts begin you know you’re watching the all-time masters at work. There is one set-piece in the middle of the film in which a rollerskating Chan hitches a ride on a motorway’s worth of speeding cars which is absolutely beyond words, ending in an automotive pile-up that outdoes The Blues Brothers. It’s a set-piece that arguably defuses the second half of the film a little; the last act has a lot of great stunt work, but nothing quite like that. Still, you can’t really take against a film whose primary flaw is that one bit of it is simply too brilliant.

The Lucky Stars franchise kept going in one form or another until 1996’s How to Meet the Lucky Stars, but the three films in Eureka’s collection – 1983’s Winners & Sinners, plus My Lucky Stars and Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars (both 1985) – are the ones which unite the central cast of Hung, Chan, Ng, Chin and Fung. (John Shum sat out My Lucky Stars so he could focus on pro-democracy activism, which makes his introduction in Winners & Sinners – leading a somewhat self-interested campaign to legalise prostitution – even funnier in retrospect) It’s a wonderful collection for anyone who enjoys this era of martial arts comedy, which on this evidence should be everyone.

Thanks for reading Graham’s review of Russian Raid & Winners and Sinners

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