Zhang Che’s landmark film - a bitter tale of revenge and the template for every kung fu movie of the seventies…
There’s something rather nasty about Vengeance. It follows it’s dogged protagonist with such fervour, such on-screen gritty, harsh and often plain malicious violence that the film becomes often both repellent and yet strangely fascinating. Even now it’s rare to see that to such a degree in a movie.
Set in the 1920s, Kuan Yu-lou (Ti Lung, Blood Brothers, A Better Tomorrow, The Magic Blade) is a successful star of Peking Opera whose flirtatious wife is getting rather too friendly with corrupt local official, Feng (Ku Feng, One-armed Swordsman, Killer Clans). Yu-lou explodes, threatening Feng at his martial arts school should he set foot near her again.
Not the best idea, as Feng sets a trap at a local teahouse where all the customers (some thirty or more) all have one goal on their mind - to kill Yu-lou. Their vicious and relentless attack leaves him with his eyes gauged out, in a caricature of his stage death performance.
There’s only one problem, Kuan Hsiao Lo (David Chiang, Bloody Brothers, Heroic Ones), Yu-luo’s younger brother who rolls in to town shortly afterward. Equally single-minded, his reason for existence seems only to get revenge for his brother’s death, and that seems to involve all the local community leaders. (That and to screw up cigarettes before he finishes smoking them.) Until he reunites with an old girlfriend - but even she can’t redeem him from his aim. And a bloody finale is set with Hsiao suited in white and the leagues of his enemies…
This creation from the long-standing team of director Zhang Che and writer I Kuang helped create the template for nearly every kung fu film of the 70s, particularly through the Bruce Lee vehicle Fist of Fury which Kuang also wrote. It’s nearly a carbon copy, with it’s contemporary setting and Lee appearing in the opening scene of the film in a similar white suit to the one Chiang dies in - like a returning angel of vengeance at his master’s funeral.
Less concerned with physical prowess (that came with Lee) the violence reaches feverish levels. Action director Yuen Cheung-yan, brother of Yuen Woo Ping and later responsible for the choreography in Charlies Angels and The Matrix sequels, brings us relentless, horrific and downright dirty fighting. More brawl than duel, fracas than contest - the fights are messy and cruel. We see Hsiao from the POV of the victim, as Hsiao’s foot repeatedly stomps down on him.
The influence of American directors, particularly Sam Peckinpah, really shines through, particularly in the orgy of death and violence that pervades the final scene. It’s substantial body count echoes Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, released a year earlier. The setting, a grandiose yet still claustrophobic main reception room of a large house, would itself be echoed in stifling ultra-violent climaxes of Brian DePalma’s Scarface and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow 2.
Yet for all its gruesome violence, it’s also one of Che’s most artistically successful films. Often quoting his appreciation for Kurosawa, here he shows knowledge of more avant-garde Japanese filmmakers like Seijun Suzuki (Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill). His appreciation for Peckinpah is once again in play, picking up on his use of slow motion to portray his leads in their heroic (and violent) death. It Undoubtedly influenced the abundant use of the technique to this day in Hong Kong movies, from Woo to Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs). Che even intercuts the protagonists life and death throws with their stage personas in their melodramatic Peking Opera.
The film itself is an unusual step away from period wuxia movies into a (near) contemporary setting for Zhang Che. Its use of guns, influenced by Italian westerns, anticipates the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre that his protégé John Woo would later have such success with. In the publication The Making of Martial Arts Films - As told by Filmmakers and Stars Che cites Bruce Lee as the obstacle in continuing down this route.
As a side note, the allegedly original music by Wang Fu-ling features a snippet from John Barry’s music for the James Bond movie On Her Majesties Secret Service.
Ultimately, Vengeance might revel in it’s own unpleasantness a little too much, but that only makes the film more absorbing - even if that experience can be compared to watching a car crash. It deservedly brought the team of Che, Kuang, Chiang and Lung to prominence and won best director and best actor (Chiang) awards at the 1970 Asian Film Festival. Together they collaborated on many of the biggest box office hits in Hong Kong of the early 70s including Duel of Fists, The Heroic Ones, The Blood Brothers, and The Water Margin.
DVD details
Distributor: IVL Films (Hong Kong)
Celestial Pictures have made another loving, beautiful restoration. It's a little short on extras, but includes the default Zhang Che featurette and others on Ti Long and David Chiang.
