The Man from Hong Kong (1974)

Directed by

Brian Trenchard-Smith

Genre

action film, adventure film, martial arts film

Country

British Hong Kong, Australia

Runtime

1h 46m

Rated

+18

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 57 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Hong Kong police inspector travels to Sydney to bring back a suspect for extradition. He ends up fighting the city's top crime boss.

energeticexplosivecampyfast-pacedwryover-the-topgrittypulp

What happens

The Man from Hong Kong (Chinese: 直搗黃龍), originally released in the US as The Dragon Flies, is a 1975 action film written and directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith in his directorial debut and starring Jimmy Wang Yu and George Lazenby, with Hugh Keays-Byrne, Roger Ward, Rosalind Speirs, Rebecca Gilling, Sammo Hung, Grant Page and Frank Thring in supporting roles. The first film to be made as an international coproduction between Australia and Hong Kong, it serves as a satire of the James Bond and Dirty Harry franchises, combined with tropes of the concurrent chopsocky craze. Its plot follows Inspector Fang Sing Leng (Wang) of the RHKPF's Special Branch, who travels to Sydney to perform an extradition, only to find himself locked in battle with Jack Wilton (Lazenby), the city's most powerful crime lord. Having gained experience as an editor of film trailers and director of television documentaries, Trenchard-Smith established a connection with Golden Harvest producers Raymond Chow and Andre Morgan while making two TV specials, The World of Kung Fu (1973) and Kung Fu Killers (1974). Originally conceived as a Bruce Lee vehicle, the film was reconfigured as Wang's English-language debut following Lee's death; much of the remaining cast and crew had previously worked on Trenchard-Smith's documentary films and on Sandy Harbutt's outlaw biker film Stone (1974). Its budget was jointly funded by Golden Harvest, Greater Union and the Australian Film Development Commission. The Man from Hong Kong features multiple large-scale action scenes with elaborate, dangerous stunts. It includes a fight scene between Hung and Ward atop Uluru/Ayers Rock as the film's opening setpiece, several car chases devised by Stone's Peter Armstrong, hang-gliding sequences performed over Hong Kong and Sydney Harbour by Page — who would achieve further recognition as the stunt coordinator for Mad Max (1979) — and a climactic battle between Wang and Lazenby in which the latter is briefly set on fire, which caused injury to the actor's hand. The film's theme song, "Sky High" by Jigsaw, became a one-hit wonder during the latter half of 1975. Although the film was released in a wide array of markets and turned a profit, The Man from Hong Kong was not the blockbuster Trenchard-Smith and the film's producers had hoped it would be upon its initial release; in Australia, its box office performance was limited as a result of its R rating. Later restored by the Australian National Film and Sound Archive, it has since garnered a cult following as one of the key films of the Ozploitation cycle and Trenchard-Smith's career, and was prominently featured in the documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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