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"Got no words, just fists!" Wellman's The Public Enemy and Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers are the main underpinnings, men rise and fall every day so the brawny rube (Chen Kuan-Tai) gives Shanghai a go, "strength and ability" are the requisites. He warms up with a street scuffle before getting his real workout while interrupting the depredations of the Axe Gang at a tea house, the camera whips from him encircled by goons lunging with blades drawn to his sidekick covering his eyes in squeamish anticipation. "That kid's got fists like iron." Pugilism is clearly the way, he topples the Russian muscleman (cf. Hill's Hard Times) and secures his spot in the underworld hierarchy. His most salient relationship is with the smiling dandy (David Chiang) who embodies his ideals of upward conquest, the songbird meant as romantic interest (Li Ching) settles for moral disappointment. "I've seen him before. Just a gangster." A Chang Cheh feast supported by Hsueh Li-Pao, the Shaw Brothers machine working at full power. The dream in the land of competition and corruption is to ride the fancy carriage you once were hired to wash, Chen's hard lips curl into a ruthless smile as the former laborer hears "Boss" attached to his name. "You won't survive long if you treat money as an enemy." Chiang has Sam Wanamaker's ivory cigarette holder from Losey's The Criminal, it shifts impudently from side to side in his mouth during a roadside ambush that drenches his immaculate white suit in crimson. The climax is an extended showdown that takes from Peckinpah and gives to De Palma and Woo and Tarantino, with the protagonist quelling opponents with a hatchet stuck in his torso—the symbolic staircase comes crashing down, the yell of fearlessness gives way to the cackle of madness. With Cheng Kang-Yeh, Ching Tien, Ku Feng, Chiang Nan, Yi Feng, Wong Ching, Shang Yun Liang, and Mario Milano.
--- Fernando F. Croce |