The Victim
01/24/2001
Review
Format: Cropped Non-Subtitled VCD
Stars: Leung Kar Yan, Sammo Hung, Chang Yi, also Chung Fa, Lam Ching Ying, Peter Chen, Wilson Tong

After Kar Yan steals away Chang Yi's bride, Chang Yi attempts to destroy Leung Kar Yan and regain his bride. Meanwhile, Sammo, a know-it-all kung fu master, is trying to become the student of Kar Yan and becomes a major stumbling block.

After watching this, I now know a few things. 1. Every movie with Sammo is good, with a few exceptions (fantasy, Where's Officer Tuba, etc.). Any time he is put into a martial arts environment, he makes heads spin. His speed surpasses nearly everyone, his form is perfect, always, and he knows how to make the audience forget that he's a fat guy jumping all over the screen. 2. Leung Kar Yan is exceptional, at least he used to be. But for a guy without a serious martial arts background, he performed wonders, especially in this. 3. If it ever happens, there be a very VERY long gap in time before something like this comes along again. Now, I'll explain. And I know that the pictures have some purple and black like beneath all of them, that's from the VCD I bought. But you can't see this stuff while watching it, only during a screen capture it seems. At least, I never noticed it.

Sammo, for starters, is looking for fights to see who can teach him something. In other words, he wants to be beaten so he can learn his lesson and become better. He starts with Chung Fa in an unexpected encounter in the market, throws some lightning fast punches and knocks him down quickly. What you might notice is that The Victim is blistering in speed (compared to the action during that period, which is the late 70's). Whenever I can put up a clip (Terrashare is being an ass), I will just so you can see what I mean. Anyways, this is an intro fight.



Chung Fa takes Sammo to his master at Sammo's request, and the master grabs a big staff with a blade at the end, Sammo takes a 3-section. Normally I don't like weapon fights, but Sammo is an exception. He's the master of the 3-section, which makes me wonder why he wasn't in any of the Shaolin Temple movies. He uses that against the staff, grabs it in the coolest way (you'd have to see it), and they do a hand to hand fight, where Sammo again impresses with some Wing Chun type moves (sorta) and does some acrobatics here and there.



There's a mini-fight with a Shaolin monk, where the monk punches Sammo in the stomach (really hard), and Sammo gets to do it back, and he takes the guy out. Funny scene.

Sammo finds Kar Yan in the market and fights him for a sec. Kar Yan keeps it cool while Sammo does some wing chun esque stuff but isn't successful. Short fight to show the superiority of Kar Yan.



There's a funny scene where Kar Yan is trying to get rid of Sammo (he keeps following him around the way a student should to his sifu), so he goes to the bath house. Sammo follows, and ends up in the bathing room itself, fighting off a bunch of naked men! The whole place is steamed, so not much is visible, and you never see more than the rear of anyone. Sammo wears a towel, and uses another one as a weapon later in the fight. Funny stuff. People do the falls while naked too. Only in HK can you find this material.



Peter Chen and his goons (he's a goon himself too, a funny one at that) come to Kar Leung's house, where Sammo is alone, and Sammo fights them all off. Good wing chun again, with some other Sammo stuff thrown in. The bad guys all do big falls, including Peter Chen it seems (without a double...?). Honestly, I thought I was watching a big version of Bruce Lee here. About a minute long.



During a flashback being told by Kar Yan's new wife about when he rescued her, we get to see Kar Yan take on a good number of people at Chang Yi's place. First, he keeps her from getting taken away by 2 guys, and throws them off. Next, he takes on FOUR guys, acting as a wall for his bride. Then he takes Peter Chen for a second, then Chang Yi (who is better and faster), and this part has some cool pivoting types of punches where they try to throw off eachother's hits with their own, and then he takes some more guys with the lady on his back. Finally his two partners help him out, and there's one guy who tries taking Chang Yi but the guy is really fast, they undercranked him a bit at the VERY end but for a middle aged man he's good here. Kar Yan does some more group fighting and looks good, and escapes.



Sammo fights off a guy who has a knife, and it's the cross eyed guy that you see regularly in HK movies, though it isn't actually him who fights. More Sammo wing chun, some comedy too. A short encounter.



There's a longer fight between Sammo and Kar Yan inside Kar Yan's house, which is rich in both choreography and environmental interaction. They start out in the entry way, move into the dining room, the bedroom, a hallway, then outside, and the whole time happen to follow Kar Yan's wife who is trying to stay away from the fight by lying down in the bedroom and sitting in the hallway. Needless to say, they're both extremely fast and go through choreography like it's nothing, with some cuts lasting for a good amount of time. The whole thing is almost 3 minutes long. One of those fights that you gawk at after watching the movie for the first time.



Kar Yan, his partner, and Sammo are ambushed by Chang Yi and all his men in the same place as the flashback fight. This is another weapons fight, but it's insanely good, with hoards of men taking on the three of them. For example, Kar Yan takes on two others at the same time, all with staffs, which is a very long cut taken from above which looks awesome, and then two men with swords using a staff, and then 4 men who all have swords, 2 more immediately after, and then 3 who have staffs. Leung Kar Yan really looks like an actual martial artist while using a staff, which is amazing. The choreography is precise and everyone is crisp, no sloppiness visible. Kar Yan's partner works on 2 others who have swords while Chang Yi supervises, and then he takes HIM on but isn't good enough and bites the dust. Meanwhile, Sammo fights another guy with a sword, and then Peter Chen who is funny as always and CONSTANTLY takes punches like a real wimp from Sammo. Surprisingly, the guy can throw punches himself pretty well and seems to know what he's doing, and he's totally relentless and after Sammo is obviously too tough for him, he keeps coming back trying to fake Sammo out, but dies. The focus changes to Kar Yan who is outside taking on Lam Ching Ying who has a sword and another guy who has a staff, and then 2 others on top of that. Sammo jumps in to help but the scene is cut short and the fight is halted by Chang Yi after Kar Yan's wife agrees to go back to him if he stops his men. End of this scene. Total length: over 5 minutes. That's a lot of time to be taking multiple men. Totally impressive.



RIGHT after that we're introduced to the new villian, Wilson Tong, who joins with Chang Yi. He fights off Yi's gang for a little while with some interesting palm strikes and very fancy footwork, and then becomes friends with Yi.



Kar Yan FINALLY accepts Sammo as his student and Sammo isn't doing so well, which is too bad considering they don't train for much longer.



The Final Act

Kar Yan fakes his death by Sammo in order to get into Chang Yi's house, and once inside, something happens. This is a spoiler, read the black text only if you want to know what happens. Highlight it to find out. Sammo dies from a stab wound there on the spot. So this is a serious plot twist. Leung Kar Yan gets the finale against, well, everyone. He fights everybody. All the men on the screen at one point or another come in contact with him.

First he fights Chang Yi for a second, who jumps through a the door into the main room. There, Kar Yan fights off the new villian, Wilson Tong. This guy is incredible. His hand movements are like a blend of all kinds of animals like tiger, monkey, mantis, and the footwork he does is extraordinary, sliding along the ground like a snake almost. Though he uses a double for some of the acrobatic stuff, the choreography he manages to go through is great.



Kar Yan finishes him off and takes on the crowd of, what, 10? And each one of them has an axe too. The crowd comes at him, he takes them all, and then pulls one out while the others recover, beats that guy up, then takes the crowd again and repeats the process until they're all down. Kar Yan has a double for a second do do a front flip, who actually moves slower than the man himself. They're all knocked out, and he moves on to Chang Yi.



He and Chang Yi start off right at the gate. They go fast, but Chang Yi is doubled a few times for some throws and the like. However, Yi is able to do the choreography otherwise. They fight outside with some impressive choreography, then move inside, do some power moves, and face off again, then go at some more fast punches and kicks with a lot of wing chun elements. Kar Yan seems to go into a grabbing hands position with his thumbs out and his hands open to grab Yi's punches. They then go into even faster motion with LOTS and LOTS of grabbing techniques, using both arms at once almost all the time, sometimes including a leg, and grabbing punches which turn into throwing fests which chain into more wing chun moves. These two men absolutely beat the living shit out of eachother until they bleed out of their mouths, and then they fight some more. When you think it's over, it's not. More power moves, and then Kar Yan gets pumped up, outperforms Chang Yi and swings him into a column. And that concludes possibly the best end scene to a martial arts movie I've ever seen. I'm totally satisfied. Total time for the whole thing: 10:33. Total time for the fight against Chang Yi: appx 5:00.



Sorry about using, uh, 58 pictures. It took me a long time to upload them but I think it's worth it. You all need to see this movie. It's such a masterpiece that I wonder if I'll ever be satisfied with another martial arts movie ever again. Hopefully so. I've been through some bad stuff, but also some gems, and I don't really want to say it, but I strongly feel that this is the best all martial arts movie I've ever seen. (That genre doesn't include modern pieces such as Legend of the Wolf or The Red Wolf, which aren't geared towards Martial Arts itself). There wasn't a stone unturned, and it totally took me by surprise. Leung Kar Yan and Chang Yi totally blew up the screen with their finale, and the plot itself was small in both time and space, so it was very easy to put myself there with the actors. I don't care about the doubles, that's superfluous to the overall presentation, like a wedding cake that goes to the roof, but has a fly on it. It doesn't matter. The choreography was what did it, and the abilities of everyone to perform it to perfection. Sammo, of course, was fantastic, but I was SO happy to see Leung Kar Yan make such a perfect performance, possbily outshining Sammo. He got whacked in Knockabout, but got his time here. It was SO good, in fact, that I just had to watch the entire thing a second time before I reviewed it just to feel it again. I hardly EVER put my time into a movie that way. Totally beyond my expectations.

5/5

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