The Man From Hong Kong

Hang gliders. Check. Marital arts. Check. George Lazenby's moustache. Check?

Touted as Australia’s first ever mar­tial arts movie (not sure if it was the last), The Man From Hong Kong was also George Lazenby’s first movie in a three pic­ture deal with Chi­nese power house, Golden Har­vest.

At first, it seems strange that Lazenby might be slum­ming it in a string of mar­tial arts movies, con­sid­er­ing the rea­sons he left the role of James Bond after just one out­ing. He was per­suaded by his agent that the likes of Bond, and I’m guess­ing by asso­ci­a­tion action movies in gen­eral, were now or soon to be out of fashion.

Nat­u­rally, that never hap­pened. Thus Lazenby found him­self cast out of one of the most suc­cess­ful movie fran­chises ever, and his career some­what in the dol­drums. Maybe then, a few mar­tial arts movies didn’t seem like such a bad idea. His time as Bond proved that he could cer­tainly throw a decent punch. And in a way, is it really pos­si­ble to slum it in a mar­tial arts movie? A mar­tial arts movie has peo­ple get­ting punched in the face, and when that’s not hap­pen­ing, they’re get­ting kicked in the face. These are the two guid­ing prin­ci­ples of this ancient, and much revered genre.

Falling in love, sev­en­ties style!

Now imag­ine apply­ing these ancient prin­ci­ples to a roman­tic com­edy. Pic­ture in your mind, the two leads (maybe Sarah Jes­sica Parker, or a pay cheque hunt­ing Ger­ard But­ler, or Jen­nifer Lopez and what­ever co-star has been plucked from TV obscu­rity to suckle at her Hol­ly­wood tit) get­ting repeat­edly punched and kicked in the face. See? It’s already a bet­ter movie.

Mind you, there is romance in The Man From Hong Kong. But it usu­ally starts with a Bond-esque line from the film’s star, Yu Wang, and ends with a game of ton­sil ten­nis in the chick’s apart­ment. Later on in the film, there’s real, proper, deep, mean­ing­ful love, of the kind that all hon­ey­moon­ing cou­ples expe­ri­enced back in the sev­en­ties: a mon­tage of horse rid­ing, long walks through fields, and pic­nics by sparkling waterfalls.

When Yu Wang (or Jimmy Wang Yu, the “Asian Steve McQueen” to give him his full inter­na­tional moniker) isn’t busy bed­ding Australia’s women, he’s try­ing to bring the film’s vil­lain, George Lazenby, to jus­tice. Hav­ing flown in from Hong Kong to extra­dite a Chi­nese pris­oner who drops dead on the wrong end of a bul­let, he’s informed that Lazenby is the man who ordered the hit.

The dead pris­oner is largely unim­por­tant, and basi­cally just a spring­board for a slew of action set pieces. And as action set pieces go, they’re pretty damn good. Yu Wang, sup­pos­edly a detec­tive, actu­ally does very lit­tle detec­tive work. The local cops point him in the right direc­tion, and then he mostly ignores them. He scales build­ings, smashes up cars, and in one par­tic­u­larly mem­o­rable scene, destroys a whole restaurant.

Lazenby makes a sug­ges­tion about the size of his opponent’s willy.

The action — rough around the edges, ener­getic — is indica­tive of a gung-ho atti­tude on set. It’s openly admit­ted by cast and crew that they shot first, and asked per­mis­sion later. And it’s refresh­ing to see the stars just throw them­selves into the action, with no CGI or overly fast edits to help them out. Lazenby even sets him­self on fire at one point. The fear in his eyes is genuine.

There’s a bla­tant dis­re­gard by the film mak­ers for any sort of health and safety law. Although, in 1970’s Aus­tralia, I’ve no idea how tight such laws might have been. Who would? I imag­ine health and safety law through the ages is a spec­tac­u­larly dull topic.

But if you’re train­ing for some sort of col­lege cer­tifi­cate that’s been slapped together in a Word tem­plate, you need only look at The Man From Hong Kong to know that in 1975, the world of health and safety was a law­less place, gov­erned by a man who rode to work on a motorbike.

At a hun­dred miles per hour. Off the end of a cliff. Whilst on fire. With George Lazenby punch­ing him in the face.