The Prodigal Son (1981) & Warriors Two (1978) Sammo Hung, Grand Master Action Director (Review)

I’m not one for dropping hot takes in reviews, but here is a case where I cannot help myself. I have no objection in claiming that Sammo Hung is one of the best action directors who have ever been. When Sammo is firing on all cylinders, he is up there with the top three martial arts cinema directors of all time (the other two being Chang Cheh & Liu Chia-Liang). The release that led me to make this claim is from Eureka Entertainment who are continuing their endeavour to resurrect the spirit left behind by DVD-era icon – Hong Kong Legends. They recently released two of Sammo’s early directorial efforts in a nicely bundled package – Warriors Two (1978) & The Prodigal Son (1981).

Even with that early claim of Sammo’s status as one of action cinema’s best directors, that doesn’t mean his films are consistent. Warriors two is a good example. His first four films (Iron Fisted Monk, Enter the Fat Dragon, this and the upcoming Knockabout) focus almost exclusively on their incredible action climaxes; their narratives are threadbare exercises in storytelling. Not that it is an issue to take seriously, it only really becomes noticeable when you compare those four against his trilogy of stone-cold classics that followed soon after – The Victim (1980), Encounters of a Spooky Kind (1980) and The Prodigal Son (1981).

As the film opens, Sammo is a long-suffering market trader who eats all his produce and later gets conned in an opening scene of “Sammo comedy nonsense”. Deflated, he visits the bank to talk to Casanova Wong (Cashier Wah) for career advice. Later, while Wong is walking home from work, he realises some money from the bank is in his pocket – heads back to work he overhears his boss, Leung Jan (Bryan Leung), making plans to kill the mayor and use his position to take over Foshan. Scared, Wong tries to tell the mayor about what he overheard. Unfortunately, he can only find the mayor’s assistant (Dean Shek), who happens to moonlight for the bad guys. Barely surviving a murder attempt by Leung Jan’s men, Cashier Wah stumbles upon Sammo, who takes him to his Wing Chun sifu, Master Tsang (also Bryan Leung). The rest of the film occupies itself with Sammo’s broad slapstick stylings, training montages and one of the all-time great closing half hours in martial arts cinema.

Around the hour mark, Warriors Two becomes pure cinema. It starts with a fight between Tsang and a gang in the same restaurant you get in hundreds of Golden Harvest productions, this leads to a mass rumble at Tsang’s school. Sammo runs off after his fellow students are defeated to fight the spear-wielding henchmen. Worse for wear, he heads back to Cashier Wah and the sole female student who are fighting the prominent members of the gang, including a tricky practitioner of the ‘Iron Shirt’ technique. Then there is a pair of sword-wielding fighters. There’s a comedy fight between Dean Shek and Sammo whilst Casanova Wong fights Leung Jan, who, as it turns out, was wearing an old man mask. Questionable plotting aside, the choreography and physicality of this last half-hour are mesmerising for both their martial arts chops and the comedy peppered throughout. I’ve often said this of the more politically leaning Shaw Brothers, but you could comfortably watch this final act in isolation, and it’d still be fun. Having the context doesn’t make much of a difference. I’m not overly critical of Warriors Two as this is true of most martial arts movies – the truly great ones have more going for them than the quality of their action scenes.

That sentiment segues rather nicely into talking about the latter of the two movies in this set – Prodigal Son. Warriors Two has wonderfully exhilirating action housed in a pretty decent if unspectacular movie, the Prodigal Son has that too but it also has a good strong plot, memorable characters and world building and a final fight that is built around a moral quandry.

Yuen Biao is Leung Chang, heir apparent to an affluent local businessman, but he has aspirations of practising martial arts – his dad charges two local masters to take his son under their wing, teaching him only the most basic techniques. Whenever a master or fight presents themselves, Leung’s dad has his servant bribe the potential combatant to dive. It is going well until a Peking Opera troupe rolls into town, and Leung picks a fight with a legitimate master (Yee-Tai, (Lam Ching-Ying)) who beats him with barely any effort. Biao follows Lam Ching-Ying begging to become his student, going as far as having his dad buy the opera group. Then Frankie Chan rolls into town, a better martial artist but still no match for Lam Ching-Ying. He also has a dad like Yuen Biao’s, only instead of bribing masters, he has his servants kill everyone in sight.

Barely surviving, the asthmatic Lam Ching-Ying and Yuen Biao head to the mountains where we meet Sammo and his daughter in a huge tonal shift with Sammo playing one of the funniest and most grotesque characters of his career. This kicks off a segment that doubles up as a succession of funny slapstick skits blended with a traditional training sequence. Albeit one where the aged up Sammo teaches Yuen Biao how to fight dirty. This culminates in a final fight between Frankie Chan and Yuen Biao, both are “prodigal son’s” but only one understands the significance. A final fight that again shows how good Sammo is at shooting and producing action scenes.

There are many threads to the Prodigal Son and its successes. Set within the world of Pekingese opera, with Lam Ching-Ying being of the male performers who act in female roles – a common thing for both Chinese and Japanese theatre of this time. Furthermore, the strong character development shows how much Sammo’s scripts evolved in just a few short years. Even though murder and revenge play a pivotal role in arriving at the final fight, the battle itself is not one of life and death – instead, Yuen Biao is fighting the person he used to be. Add these successes to a succession of incredibly choreographed and performed fight scenes, and it is no wonder that The Prodigal Son is oft-discussed in conversation over what is “the greatest martial arts film of all time”.

Warriors Two may not be as considered and consistent as The Prodigal Son, but both are the product of one of action cinema’s grandest masters. That alone makes this an essential entry into the home collection of any fan of martial arts cinema.

Extras on the disc are thin, outside of different dubs and directors commentary, each disc has one making of/retrospective with cast members and crew from behind the scenes. Both are worth a watch but both have a feeling of nostalgia, and given the age of these movies and the language barrier, there’s a strong chance these extras first lived life on those old Hong Kong Legends DVDs. This would be rather fitting because, as I said, Eureka Entertainment is “resurrecting the spirit” of that forever beloved legend of the DVD years. The box art by Darren Wheeling is pretty cool, too

ROB’S ARCHIVE – WARIORS TWO (1978) & THE PRODIGAL SON (1981)