Ninja Over the Great Wall
Director: Bruce Le
Year: 1987
Rating: 5.0
Aka - Fire on the Great Wall
Aka - Shaolin Fist of Fury
Aka - Great Wall Fighter
Mandarin with subs but the sound dropped
out for much of it.
Though this was produced in 1987 (or 1990
according to HKMDB), it is very much Old-School Kung Fu. That may be because
it is a Mainland production and they had not adapted to the Jackie Chan/Sammo
Hung style of action. Also, I expect because it was directed by, choreographed
by and starring Bruce Le. Ya, that Bruce Le of more Bruce Lee cloned films
than you can count. That is what he built his career on and he basically
takes on that mantle once again by beating up on the Japanese. The Mainland
was only too happy to provide locations even the Great Wall! Nothing like
an anti-Japanese film to make their hearts beat faster.
It is 1931 and the Japanese are up to their
old tricks. Slaughtering villages of Chinese with no mercy - women, children
- it doesn't matter. Machine guns, bayonets, rifles all used indiscriminately.
Chi-keung (Bruce Le) is living there and his mother is murdered - he kills
a few soldiers but is captured and along with many others taken to an open
field and had the machine guns turned on them. He somehow survives and is
saved by his girlfriend Yip. They travel through a field of skulls and bones
and make their way to Beijing where her uncle lives. The Japanese have control
of that city as well. Chi-Keung comes across a Master being attacked by ninjas
who are everywhere in this film. He helps him stave them off and joins his
martial arts school. A pause. Master Yeung is played by Yu Hai. This pleased
me so much. One of the truly authentic martial arts masters in China. His
specialty was the Praying Mantis which he utilizes here. He was in the Jet
Li Shaolin Temple trilogy and a few other Hong Kong films.
This gets off to a really decent start but
around the mid-point it just falls apart. One strange loose end is when the
Master sends another one of his students to Shanghai to warn the army that
the Japanese are up north. Off he goes and we never hear about him again.
The thing is that the actor is Li Ning - a famous gymnast who won six medals
(three of them gold) in the 1984 Summer Olympics. And they forgot about him.
Li Ning is now a billionaire and the founder of the Li-Ning sportswear company.
And then even stranger in 1994 he shows up in Wonder Seven with Michelle
Yeoh.
There is a fair amount of action. Shojiro
(Luk Chuen) - son of the Japanese commander - wants to challenge Master Yeung
to a duel. Good fight. Later Chi-keung has a solid fight with him as well.
And of course, Chi-keung has to make the traditional trip to a Japanese dojo
and beat everyone up. Lots of ninjas popping out of everywhere - even
the snow in the middle of nowhere - and Chi-keung goes through them in the
same way I do a box of chocolate chip cookies - ninjas are not what they
used to be - but it all leads to the final duel between Chi-keung and Shojiro
on the Great Wall. The damn Great Wall. Not a fake Great Wall. And there
are like hundreds of on-lookers cheering Chi-keung on. What the hell.
