Overrated

A Disappointing Continuation

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

THE ANGRY GUEST is a Shaw Brothers sequel to a film I haven't seen, called DUEL OF FISTS, but the story is so easy to follow that watching the first in the series is not an absolute requirement. It's an irresistible teaming up of the two hottest Shaw actors of the period, Ti Lung and David Chiang, with the director who directed them at their very best, Chang Cheh.The slight twist in this film is that along with its predecessor it has a contemporary setting, so the story is accompanied by funky music and is chock-full of eye-popping fashions. The action hops from Thailand to Hong Kong and Japan and is always coherent, telling the simplistic story of a couple of good guys falling foul of a Japanese crime syndicate and forced into a battle for survival.Those looking for depth or insight will find little on display here as this is a straightforward action thriller. I found that it had little of the Shaw 'feel' to it, unlike for example the studio's wuxia epics which bore all their trademarks; this by contrast is heavily derivative of the many kung fu films that came out in the early 1970s when the world was going crazy for Bruce Lee and his peers. Chiang and Lung are fine in their straightforward roles and there are good roles for Ching Li and Jen Tsu Fang as the women of the cast. Cheh himself has a small role as the Japanese crime boss.The film is light and breezy and full of great action, as you'd expect from Shaw. The fight scenes are of the 'basher' variety but there are some cool stunts involving our heroic twosome, such as leaping through windows or chasing down a bad guy on motorbikes. The climax takes place at a building site and involves some great shovel-fu. Watch out for the ever-hulking Bolo Yeung in one of the henchman roles, while the great Japanese actor Yasuaki Kurata proves a match as the main villain of the piece.

THE ANGRY GUEST (1972) is a direct sequel to DUEL OF FISTS (1971) which had two long-separated brothers, Ti Lung and David Chiang, reuniting in Bangkok and running afoul of the local mob after Ti Lung, a boxer, beats the local favorite in the ring. In this film, the action shifts from Bangkok to Hong Kong to Japan and then back to HK as the brothers contend with a Japanese mob led by crime boss Yamaguchi, who is played by the film's director, Chang Cheh, in a rare screen appearance. There are some good fight scenes enlivened by the presence of Yasuaki Kurata, a Japanese actor and martial artist who subsequently made a long career out of playing Japanese opponents in Hong Kong kung fu films. (He fights Gordon Liu in 1979's SHAOLIN CHALLENGES NINJA and Jet Li in 1994's FIST OF LEGEND.) The final fight scene here takes place in a construction site in HK as Katsu (Kurata) defeats all of Ti Lung's students and then fights David and Ti together. In addition, muscleman Yang Sze (aka Bolo Yeung) appears as a Japanese thug who attacks Ti's kung fu school at one point.Despite location shooting in Japan, this film is, thankfully, not as much of a travelogue as the Bangkok-filmed DUEL OF FISTS, nor are the contemporary fashions quite as ridiculous as the ones worn by David Chiang in the earlier film. There's a jazz-inflected original score that's quite a relief from the canned music/ripped-off soundtracks heard in so many 1970s kung fu films.