I'll Finally Knock You Down Dad
1/20/2001
Review
Format: Cropped Subtitled VHS
Stars: Chin Siu Ho, Chen Kuan Tai, Phillip Ko Fei, Bill Tung

Chin Siu Ho isn't skilled in the family style, so his father gives him the boot and Siu Ho begins training in order to show his dad that he's an able son.

Despite the very weird title, which actually says it all, this is a very cool movie. Chin Siu Ho's performance is much like Yuen Biao's in Knockabout, and Chen Kuan Tai is good, along with Phillip Ko. This is a Shaw Bros. movie, made in the late 70's, so it's practically guaranteed to be good. It's also really fun and light hearted, with no bad guys, no hard feelings, and a decent moral I guess: Don't be lazy. Something like that.

First we get a good looking lion dance with Siu Ho in the front, which is impressive. It has a slight twist on the lion dancing idea too, where he tries to get the ribbon from a woman who is running around. Siu Ho seems like a natural at this, which is kind of weird considering he's hardly ever in martial arts movies these days, except Fist of Legend and Tai Chi Master. The girl here is annoying, especially her voice-over, but she's flexible. Long scene too, over 5 minutes.



Siu Ho wants to show off for his dad, so he does staffwork against 2 other guys, who are instructed by him to lose because he can't fight very well. It's great looking, fast, and filmed perfectly like I'd expect from SBros. The other guys mess up and start foiling Siu Ho's plan, which is funny, but Siu Ho ends up still fooling his dad. They go into hand to hand work (perfect, staff, AND THEN empty hands), which is shorter but still great. Everything is fast too, while almost two beat. Cool. Chin Siu Ho is fast too.



Chen Kuan Tai, Siu Ho's father, has to defend himself against a crazy guy and his goons, which is short but cool. The crazy man does a mean looking HK spin and Kwan Tai has some good action, taking on the other guys for a moment. He's a bit stiff but it's ok, the choreography is still good. And the mad man does a diveroll right into Kwan Tai's spread-legged backflip (doubled), an awesome looking maneuver. Wonder how they thought of that one.



Siu Ho and his friends get in trouble with Phillip Ko's martial arts school students and they get into a big group fight. This is something interesting because everyone is fighting and it's all choreographed well. Though short (1 minute) it's got lots of stuff happening with falls and multiple fights, and sometimes the camera goes out to look at everyone, and Siu Ho takes on a few guys at once.



At the wedding, there's a good acrobatic performance by a bunch of guys made up as monkeys. It tends to go on for a while (3:21) but it's still good. There's some actual monkey style moves in it like the springing leg, but then there's some wirework and reverse crap which is annoying. Towards the end it gets a bit eerie as Chin Siu Ho does breakdancing to some 80's butt rock. Wonder why.



Right after that, Phillip Ko challenges Siu Ho outside in the dark (still it's well lit), and they have a 2 minute encounter much like that one between Siu Ho and Jet in FOL. Ko seems like a complete professional, and I don't know if they undercranked it a bit or what, but Ko's hands are fast and he does some Tiger it seems and then some open hand style that I can't identify. Siu Ho gets beaten around and tries to cheat, fails, and ends up "deficient", meaning he just can't fight well. There's a BS wirekick by Ko but other than that a cool fight.



Some fortune teller is giving everyone a bunch of rubbish, so Bill Tung, who is a monk, jumps in and starts giving the guy some trouble and shows him his awesome martial arts skill, but does nothing important at all really except do fist, palm, fist, palm, and the fortune teller is bewildererd by it. Funny stuff. And Bill Tung of all people! (He played Jackie's uncle in the Police Story series). One of his moves is "Wu Chung killing Sister-in-law"!



Immediately after, Chin Siu Ho fights 5 others while holding a heavy bag of something. He does well against the 4 at first until someone who knows what he's doing comes in beats him. But Siu Ho's moves are interesting and he's quick.



There's a small training scene with Siu Ho going under Bill Tung's guidance. First, Tung teaches him some lame thing that obviously won't work (you can tell he made it up right there, he has a move called "Liu Yi Manual"), and then teaches him the fist, palm, fist, palm move and tells him he's lucky to learn it. Funny.



Siu Ho returns to his father to try and show him that he's capable of fighting now. This is interesting because you get to see how Chen Kuan Tai's style out-does some complete BS made up by a monk who always asks for money. You can see Chin Siu Ho's moves are bad because they leave him open in many places, and Kuan Tai takes advantage of this. Though Siu Ho still manages to look good, he's beaten by Kuan Tai's steel fingers. Siu Ho tries the fist, palm 'technique' which fails miserably. Siu Ho is finished when he flies and hits a bench and does a painful fall onto it. Great smart fight, 3 minutes long.



Siu Ho starts training again to learn his family style, and has Bill Tung beat him whenever he isn't training. He does some thumb pushups, other exercises, and uses Tung as a wing chun dummy.



He goes to Phillip Ko next to show him that he can now fight, and they have a good fight but I can tell that they're both doubled at times. Ko doesn't seem to be able to do fast moves and they have someone else not show their face, and Siu Ho's double does stuff like front flips and HK spins. Besides that it's pretty good. They fight with saw horses half way through, and Ko does his two styles. 2 minutes long.



When Siu Ho returns home, his mother fights with his father for a while (nothing great, she's slow), but his fight against his father is great, though a bit silly and short. Some good acrobatics, though I doubt they're from the actual people, and the hand to hand work is great just like in the rest of the movie. There's a lot of dialogue and pauses in the action, and I don't think there's more than 2 minutes of fighting, but it's still good and fast. It ends up being a bunch of fun by both of them.



Since this is really the first Shaw piece I've reviewed, I'm surprised at how good it is. I expected slow stuff like from their early 70's work, but this is fast and it seems very modern. Lots of action, everyone does a good job (despite the use of doubles), and they all feel big too, but maybe that has to do with the screen being cropped. I'd like to see more of these.

5/5

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