Secret Rivals
May 13, 2001
Review
Format: Cropped Mandarin VCD
Stars: Wang Tao, John Liu Chung Liang, Hwang Jang Lee

Wang Tao and John Liu come into town and meet with a woman, who they both fall in love with. Liu, however, steals her heart and develops a conflict with Wang, until they both find a common enemy and become friends.

This movie comes from a time when fight choreography was just getting a bit of an overhaul. It's not entirely spectacular, but you can tell that since the early 70's, things had changed for the better. The characters, thanks to the story, are entirely likable. Wang Tao, while not quite as famous as Liu, is his equal in this and his screen presence is just as strong. Sadly he was taken out in the sequel for who knows what reason. Hwang Jang Lee has surprisingly little screen time, but what he has is very nice. But the thing I want to say is that despite all the hype surrounding this movie, I wasn't entirely impressed by it. The 3 main characters were excellent, but almost every other villian was rubbish and didn't put up a good fight. That said, the fighting put out by Liu, Wang, and Hwang is great.

The first fight to come shows exactly what was happening at this time. Choreographers still didn't know how to make the camera see things as they wanted it to see them, which is why at times you hear hits but don't see anything. The moves are fast and realistic, but it lacks the, what should I say, glamour that was later put into HK films. This appeals to a certain audience, as it does to me, but at the same time I can see that they were trying to refine things and later did with #2.



Wang Tao comes into the movie. Someone who's used to the new wave HK pop-idol movies will probably think this guy is ugly and weird looking (what's the difference? I think Ekin Cheng is terribly ugly), as they will with Liu, but remember that this man's looks aren't what make him look good, but his style and movements that allow him to shine. He's in the best shape I've ever seen an HK actor in as well, trim while built well, and I hear he's even better built in Death Duel of Kung Fu. He does some Hung Gar which looks vicious, and I believe it's done correctly, you can spot the tiger and crane movments here and there.



Wang shows his stuff in the town square against some trouble makers and proves how fast he is. It's short and he just blocks and attacks, but he's fast and even throws a nice arial kick. The attackers don't stand a chance.



There's a few short bouts at a competition, one has practically all kicking which is nice, the tough one throws good chained spin kicks. The second fight is half punching, half kicking, and then another one similar, and finally a REALLY stupid looking white guy with a hairy chest and big sideburns pops in but doesn't fight yet. These fights are good, no doubt, just short and of a different formula than I'm used to. What I expected when I bought this was a 2 beat style with intricate attacks, but instead it's the opposite, being faster with more basic fighting.



Ah finally we see John Liu practising his amazing kicking on hanging pots. I don't think you can kick any higher than this unless your leg is longer than his, his spin kicks are accurate, legs are perfectly straight the entire time, jumping kicks are incredible (see picture), totally amazing. I heard that he went through excruciating pain to get to this level of kicking.



Back at the competition, the white guy is fighting the son of the runner of the comptetition, and he does some ok kicking but everything from him feels sloppy. Some of his spin kicks are good but when he does any ducking or jumping it just looks awkward, but who knows, I bet he was a real martial artist. Wang Tao butts in and annihilates him with style, nothing special though.



Wang Tao gets a longer fight, 2 minutes long or so, where he fights off 4 assailants and does some very fast punching and nice kicking. It's one of those fights where he takes one guy at a time, blocks their wimpy moves and attacks them, they fall, next person, but still he looks professional. Again I was surprised at his kicking ability, nice arial maneuvers.



Liu and Wang Tao square off after finding eachother out and first do some practising. Liu is the one to watch here, he does kicks and stretches that made me think that he was born with the ability. Meanwhile, Wang goes nuts with nunchaku but throws them away (for sporting reasons I guess). They have a brief but very spirited match, best in the movie so far, Wang and Liu put themselves into it very nicely, first doing some punching, and then Liu kicking at Wang. Good stuff, as I said the best fight in the movie so far.



Hwang makes a small appearance to fight Wang Tao and then has a very small exchange with John Liu. Nothing big though, and you learn about Hwang's fighting style. Afterwords there's a neat scene where Liu tries to figure out how to beat Hwang's deadly strike that dented a piece of metal Liu wore over his chest while fighting him. Then he does some training with a kid where he kicks at swinging logs, and it looks really dangerous actually. Something to note though is that Liu kicks primarily with his right leg, he rarely kicks with his left.



Ugh, again a group of bad guys, who look like everyone else in the movie, fight against Liu. Nothing exciting, just one-dimensional dummies throwing weak punches and kicks. Liu next takes a man with some knives and does more signature kicking on him with very nice height on his arial moves. Finally he goes against ONE MORE nameless, hopeless villian who can't score a hit off Liu. More great kicking from Liu but the villian is aweful.



Liu and Wang fight once more and this, again, is the best fight of the movie so far. Liu does good chained kicking, Wang does some acrobatics and good hand movements. Wang gets wasted by Liu's kicking though and can't do much else though.



Hwang Jang Lee FINALLY gets his fight against Liu. He kicks Liu around for a second before going into his stance, which looks like mantis. Right away you see that they work together better than the rest of the dumb people in this film (excluding Wang), and their punches and kicks are chained together much more quickly than in other fights. Some long slomo parts where we see how Liu has learned from his mistakes throughout the movie (and it looks painful, ooh). Great camerawork and I doubt Hwang did his own acrobatics, but whoever did them was AWESOME. A lot of the kicking occurs in simple combinations of the same kick repeated, which is a bit annoying, but overall the kicking is great. Wang Tao saves Liu from Hwang's leg lock after a minute or two and provides the hands needed to beat Hwang. They double team on him at once and make a good duo. Eventually they figure "Heaven and Earth" with one attacking high and the other low and kill Hwang. In total this fight was 5 minutes long, a good ending to a somewhat disappointing movie.



What do I mean by disappointing movie? As I said a few times, anyone who isn't Wang, Liu, or Hwang has no background. There is no feeling for them. Even Hwang's position is questionable, but he was a strong villian so he needed less than the others. Everyone else, though, was completely idiotic, not knowing anything about what they were doing, just attacking in groups. Fighting was good yes, but with these group fights, they were all the same, and the sub villians were all the same. So, regardless of how well they fought, there was very little variety. However, this is still a movie any fan of HK films should own because of the history, and the visuals are also great as it's filmed in Korea. Lots of pasture and trees. I considered giving this a 3, but since Liu and Wang fought 2 times, and they're skills were great, coupled with the fight at the end, a 4 is fair. Also, the vcd I bought is the Mei Ah Laser one and it's cropped, sometimes you can't read the subtitles and it DOES cut off the action in some parts. Keep an eye out for that.

4/5

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