The Valiant Ones
directed by King Hu
starring Wing Bai, Feng Hsu, Sammo Hung
Eureka Entertainment
Amidst the explosion of Bruce Lee mania, grittier forms of on screen martial arts violence took over cinema.worldwide. For decades wuxia films were the standard. The fairy tale feel of the wuxia films — think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) — soon felt oddly quaint as fists quickly replaced swords and bone crunching blows replaced lyrical swordplay As the wuxia was being dismissed, director King Hu’s The Valiant Ones (1975) stood as a fitting coda to the grand period of the genre.
Based on historical events during the Ming era in China, a group of Japanese pirates are attacking trade and travel routes. The provincial governor needs to provide safe passage for government officials and tasks a famed husband-and-wife warrior duo to assemble a squad to defeat the pirates by any means necessary. Although the story is based on historical events, the film actually plays more like western WW2 commando movies The Guns of Navarone (1961) or Where Eagles Dare (1968). The film is about professional men doing a job for king and country, as opposed to the personal vendettas that populated so much of martial arts films of the era. The band headed up by a husband-and-wife team of martial artists are willing to martyr themselves in the service of their emperor and governor. Once the formalities of the mission are established, it becomes action time. The small squad must use all of their skills and a fair amount of cunning and subterfuge to even the odds and work their way down the east coast of China hunting for the pirates’ headquarters so they can take out the leaders.
The Valiant Ones is a marvel of combat and action scenes with dynamic quick cut editing that would become the signature of late New Wave directors like Tsui Hark (Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, 1983) and Ching Siu-Tung (A Chinese Ghost Story, 1987), whose work would revolutionize film in Hong Kong with influence impacting global cinema. The entire film is absolute eye candy, which is hardly a surprise from the director of Come Drink with Me (1966) and Dragon Inn (1967). It is difficult to overstate the influence and importance of the filmography of director King Hu on Hong Kong and world cinema.
The Valiant Ones has returned on Blu-ray with a striking 4k restoration from the original negatives for the film, which were donated to the Hong Kong Film Archive by director King Hu. The disc from Eureka Entertainment, as part of their Masters of Cinema Series, features a beautiful transfer of the film with the original Mandarin mono audio track intact, along with freshly translated subtitles. The release also features an audio commentary by Asian film expert Frank Djeng, and a number of interviews and video essays on the film and its place in martial arts cinema history.
