What John Woo action classics A Better Tomorrow and The Killer owe to his lone wuxia film Last Hurrah for Chivalry

The martial arts scenes in Woo’s only wuxia film lack a defining style, but their length and the way they are staged show where the director’s talents lay

Its male bonding and notions of chivalry and brotherhood hark back to his mentor Chang Cheh’s work, but also hint at what is to come in A Better Tomorrow

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Damian Lau and Bonnie Ngai in a still from Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1979).

Published: 5:15am, 9 May 2021Updated: 7:38pm, 10 May 2021

Hong Kong film director John Woo Yu-sen was riding high as the city’s comedy king in 1979, having directed big hits like Pilferer’s Progress, and although he harboured great ambitions to change the nature of local cinema, he was quite happy to continue in a comedic vein.

Woo was already a star director – the Cantonese opera film Princess Chang Ping had catapulted him to the front rank in 1976 – yet by his own admission, he had yet to develop a unique and identifiable style.

Woo was signed to Golden Harvest, and although they planned for him to continue making money-spinning comedies for the company – which he did – they asked him to direct a one-off action movie. The result was the wuxia film Last Hurrah for Chivalry.

Woo had already made three undistinguished kung fu films – including the early Jackie Chan feature The Hand of Death – but Last Hurrah for Chivalry was his first and only wuxia film. It’s an idiosyncratic movie, with a sprawling plot which tries to shoehorn lowbrow comedic antics and chivalrous behaviour together, and it features long martial arts sequences which lack an overarching style.

Although enjoyable, its main points of interest lie in its hints at the stylistic and thematic content of Woo’s later action films, and how it reflects the influence of legendary martial arts director Chang Cheh. Woo had worked as an assistant director for Chang on six films, including Boxer from Shantung and The Blood Brothers , between 1972 and 1975 and has always regarded the director as his mentor.

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