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Review by
Calvin
McMillin: |
By
all rights, Fearless Hyena 2 should be a horrible
film on par with such patchwork disasters as Game of
Death and Trail of the Pink Panther. Though the
leads in both of those films died, thankfully, the reason
for Jackie Chan's departure from this movie was far less
grave, but almost as dramatic. Fearless Hyena 2 was
set to be Jackie Chan's first film under a new contract
with Lo Wei's production company. Though Chan starred in
a slew of films for Lo, none of them were hits. With the
future legend's film career at somewhat of a standstill,
the noted director had no problem loaning Chan out for a
two-picture deal with Ng See-Yuen's Seasonal Films. After
experiencing a taste of box office success with the Yuen
Woo-Ping-directed hits Snake in the Eagle's Shadow
and Drunken Master, Chan began to have second thoughts
about his new contract with Lo, which he felt pressured
into signing after completing the final film on his initial
contract, the original Fearless Hyena.
Famously, Jackie broke his new
deal with Lo (a purported triad member) by walking out on
the sequel after filming only a couple scenes. How Jackie
Chan avoided getting killed off by the triads and returned
to Hong Kong to become a megastar is the stuff of legends,
but what became of his abandoned film is an interesting
story in itself. Proving to be somewhat more talented than
most give him credit for, Lo Wei supervised a reshoot of
the uncompleted film (with an assist from director Chan
Chuen). By taking the footage from the 1980 shoot, incorporating
some used and unused scenes from Chan's previous films,
and hiring a double to bridge the gaps created by Chan's
departure, Lo was able to assemble a sequel, Fearless
Hyena 2. The final result is a surprisingly halfway
decent film, aside from the climax when Chan's absence becomes
blatantly obvious.
In the opening moments of
this sequel (in name only) to Fearless Hyena, the
evil duo known as Heaven and Earth (Yang Yee-Kwan and Kwan
Yung-Moon) are hunting down two fleeing martial artists.
Heaven and Earth's motivation isn't anything new: the evil
pair wants to "rule the martial world" and "eliminate
the Yin-Yang Clan"—typical bad guy behavior. In
order to outwit Heaven and Earth, the two brothers separate,
taking their sons with them into seclusion.
Flashing forward several years
to the future, we find Chan Lung (Jackie Chan), a loveable
scamp, living with Old Chan (James Tien in old age makeup
again), one of the runaway kung fu masters from the prologue.
As with his character in the first film, Lung is quite mischievous
and tries to please his father by holding down an honest
job, but to no avail. Lung is more successful scamming the
local bullies than he is waiting tables for a local restaurateur
(Dean Shek in a hilarious cameo). Elsewhere, Chan Chi-Pei
(Chen Lui-Hui) is trying to raise his good-for-nothing son,
Tung (Austin Wai), a lazybones who constructs an elaborate
mechanism of pulleys and levers that allow him to get his
morning meal and various luxuries without exerting much
effort in the process. After some comic interludes featuring
both cousins separately, Heaven and Earth come crashing
down on the elderly Chans, leaving Lung and Tung with no
other option but to unite and take on the nefarious kung
fu masters themselves.
The circumstances surrounding
Fearless Hyena 2 add additional layers of analysis
that just wouldn't be necessary in an "ordinary"
film. The movie is not a true sequel and based on the footage
that actually features Jackie Chan, it probably was never
intended to be a direct continuation of the first film's
plot. The premise is almost identical, though one wonders
if there was ever any intention to have a parallel father-son
plot to the James Tien-Jackie Chan relationship. It seems
more likely that the film did not have these elements, and
was instead meant as a semi-remake of the first film (much
as Drunken Master redoes Snake in the Eagle's
Shadow plot with several adjustments).
Fearless Hyena 2 in
no way ranks as highly as the first film, but considering
its checkered history, it's a wonder that the sequel is
even remotely coherent. The main draw of this flick is to
take a look at the scenes Jackie Chan filmed prior to his
walkout. One such scene involves Chan Lung engaging a local
punk in a serious of bets, which escalates into an impressive
game of acrobatics. That particular set piece concludes
with a funny bit with Lung employing a shoe as a weapon,
which seems almost a precursor to Chan's later propensity
for using whatever's handy in his fight scenes.
The supporting players do
their best to keep the film lively when Chan is absent,
but they can only do so much. James Tien and Chan Lui-Hui
do a competent job in the fights scenes and a comic sidekick
named Frog (Hon Gwok-Choi) tries to inject some humor into
the proceedings, but none of them is a substitute for Jackie
Chan. Perhaps the biggest problem with the film is the other
lead, Austin Wai. His character's laziness is used as a
plot point (Tung employs booby traps to defeat one of the
villains to make up for his lack of skill), but the film
could have been helped immensely if the filmmakers would
have simply cast someone impressive like Yuen Biao or perhaps
even one of the various Bruce Lee clones to pick up the
martial arts slack while Chan is off-screen.
How the filmmakers disguise
the fact that they don't have that many real scenes with
Jackie Chan is admittedly clever—until the final act,
that is. The film's introductory scenes of Lung hunting
for food in the wild are actually taken from an earlier
Chan vehicle, Spiritual Kung Fu. Later, Lung dons
a series of disguises, which actually holds true to the
premise of the previous film in which Chan's character dresses
up as various characters to hide his job as a fighter from
his stern father. But Jackie Chan's disappearance becomes
readily apparent in the final battle. In some scenes, a
double is filmed from behind or hidden by some well-placed
foliage. In other cases, the filmmakers insert recycled
shots from the first Fearless Hyena to compensate
for the lack of any new "final duel" footage.
The cuts are in no way seamless as scenes featuring Chan's
double will take place in a forest only to be suddenly interrupted
by close-ups of Jackie Chan in the middle of a clearing.
With lowered expectations,
the film could amount to a fun diversion for those seeking
an old school kung fu fix. The scenes with a young Jackie
Chan are worth viewing, but in the end, Fearless Hyena
2 is really nothing more than a novelty. This is a professionally
executed hack job, but a hack job nonetheless. (Calvin McMillin
2003)
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