Overview: Just as the kung fu film seemed to be losing steam as the 1970s came to a close, a new generation of martial arts stars rose to the top of Hong Kong cinema.

Amongst them were Yuen Biao, Jackie Chan and the irrepressible Sammo Hung, who found fame as the director and star of The Iron Fisted Monk, The Magnificent Butcher and Encounter of the Spooky Kind.

Presented here are three films spanning Hung’s career, from a supporting role in The Manchu Boxer to stardom in Paper Marriage and Shanghai, Shanghai.

Blu-ray Verdict: In Wu Ma’s The Manchu Boxer (1974), Hung (who doubles up as the film’s fight choreographer) plays the villainous foil to a roaming martial artist who enters a boxing tournament to defeat a gang of bandits.

This was a wonderful Golden Harvest production filmed in South Korea with Sammo as action director and Wu Ma as the director. Sammo and his gang play the typical one-dimensional Japanese bad guys. They rob, kill, and lust for Chinese ladies. These activities fill the movie as it sluggishly makes its way to the climactic big tournament. The gang has been killing off the contenders to guarantee a win. Their brilliant plan fails. Our hero wins the tournament (oh, yeah, **spoiler!**) and all is right, everyone is happy, and the world is a nice place once again!

Then, in the action comedy Paper Marriage (1988), Hung stars as a down-on-his-luck Chinese boxer living in Canada who is paid to marry an immigrant from Hong Kong (Maggie Cheung). She wants to gain Canadian citizenship, but he just wants to keep the loan sharks off his back.

Paper Marriage seems to have been envisaged as Sammo Hung’s answer to Jackie’s Police Story, in all truth. It’s a story set and shot in Canada, where Hung’s immigrant is married to an equally desperate Maggie Cheung. The only thing these two have in common is a great desire for money, and lots of it, so the majority of the running time is made up of the usual bumbling Hong Kong-style comedy in which the pair get into scrapes.

Hung gets into the ring and battles veteran villains Phillip Ko and Billy Chow in a couple of violent scrapes inspired by Rocky, while Cheung indulges in mud wrestling in one memorable moment. Generally this is quirky, likeable stuff, building up to an appropriately exciting climax set in a shopping mall, with plenty of nods to the aforementioned Police Story.

Finally, in Shanghai, Shanghai (1990), a young man (Yuen Biao) goes looking for his brother, a police officer, in the big city - and also finds himself embroiled with a ruthless gangster played by Hung.

The location shooting in Shanghai was a really nice touch and seeing Yuen Biao as the star again is always welcomed. Seeing how he can hold a movie together like he did in Righting Wrongs, I mean, how much more proof did we need that he would be one of today’s leading men in film?

The cast is great. Yuen Biao becomes friends with an acrobatic troupe, and they all have great chemistry together. He also performs well with George Lam who plays his brother. Hung stars here as the movie’s villain. He acts his part really well too. At first he only seems to be ruthless as he’s only cruel to the other bad men in the movie, but then it becomes apparent that he doesn’t care for the people of Shanghai and is only interested in building his already huge empire.

Oh, and the finale scene with the one-on-one fight between Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung is breathtakingly well shot. I’m sure these two have had many fight scenes with each other before, but this one is top notch. Excellent choreography. The action may not come in bucketloads, but when the scenes do occur, it’s worth the price of admission, as they say.

Limited Edition Special Features:
Limited edition of 2,000 copies
Limited edition exclusive bonus disc
Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Sam Gilbey
Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Sammo Hung
1080p HD presentations from brand new 2K restorations of the original Hong Kong theatrical cuts of all three films
Original mono audio tracks
Optional English dubs
Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
New audio commentary on The Manchu Boxer with East Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist & filmmaker Michael Worth
New audio commentary on Paper Marriage with genre cinema experts Stefan Hammond and Arne Venema
New audio commentary on Shanghai, Shanghai with Frank Djeng and producer/writer F.J. DeSanto
New interview with Paper Marriage director Alfred Cheung
Trailers

Official Purchase Link