Righting Wrongs

Wrong At Heart

Righting Wrongs
aka Zhi fa xian feng
aka Above The Law
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by Corey Yuen  
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Very spoilery spoilers.

Wow. Righting Wrongs is another great, early martial arts classic starring Cynthia Rothrock and, I think it’s one of my favourite ones. But first, I had to decide which version to watch. Which frustrated me no end. I mean, power to 88 Films and all but this is a two disc edition with no less than four different cuts (well, more than that... wait for it). The original Hong Kong Theatrical Cut, the English Above The Law Cut, the Singapore Cut and, an Ultimate Cut combining footage from all three versions. So I initially thought I’d watch the Ultimate Cut but, it turns out that before you play the movie, you have to choose which one of four endings you want the film to end with? I mean... really? I have no idea... to quote an old 1980s Lenny Henry joke where he was talking about buying 12” remix singles... “Just give me the one where they got it right!”

So in the end I decided ‘screw this’, I’m going back to the first disc with the Hong Kong version on it, which turned out to be the exact right choice because the ending on this thing is... well, I’ll get to it. But even there I was getting very frustrated because, before the disc would let me play the film, I then had to choose one of four different language and sound mixes for the movie. I went with Hong Kong because I don’t want to see people dubbed into inappropriate English voices and, yeah, similarly, this was the right choice to make.

The film starts with Biao Yuen as chief prosecutor Hsia Ling-Cheng, failing to prevent a judge from getting machine gunned to death. Then, a whole family of witnesses (including several young children) and the police protecting them, are brutally murdered and then blown up. So the case to jail a couple of crime bosses Ling-Chen had been trying to put behind bars... falls apart. Egged on by his magistrate friend (played by Roy Chiao... Lao Che of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom), he takes matters into his own hands, infiltrates one of the two bosses’ safe apartments and then kills him. Kills him to death!!!!!

Enter Inspector Cindy Si, played by Cynthia Rothrock and her new, comedy relief partner (played by the film’s director). She gets a clue that it might have been the prosecutor who killed the guy so, after some verbal sparring with him, she follows him and when she turns up, the other boss is dead (as are all his gang) and she has her man at the scene of the crime. Unknown to her, Ling-Chen didn’t kill this lot. The magistrate gives him an alibi (even though she believes he killed them all) but she’s still following him around trying to prove his guilt.

Unknown to them both at this time, it was actually the chief of police played by Melvin Wong... who is trying to take over the gangs himself... who killed all this lot. And he wants to pin everything on Ling-Chen to cover up and also kill him... and anyone who knows... in the process. Unknown to everyone, a street smart teenage kid witnessed the crimes and, after underestimating the chief of police (who he tries to blackmail) he finds himself thrown in with both the prosecutor and Cindy (who, eventually, works out what’s going on).

And this is a great, if convoluted film. It’s only got a dab of the broad comedy stylings which are the weak spot (in my opinion) of some of these films and, well, it’s not just the spectacular fight and chase stunt scenes where the film pulls no punches. It’s ultimately a very bleak film and here’s why...

Every time you get attached to a regular character, something bad happens to them. So the lovable comic relief guy gets killed by his boss, the police chief, along with his innocent grandad. What the heck? And then, as if this isn’t bad enough, when the kid finally ‘comes in’ and decides to work with our two main protagonists, he gets taken out with a throat stabbing too. And it all prompts spectacular fight after spectacular fight. There’s some great stuff going on here and as much as I admire Biao Yuen’s obvious skills... I have to say that Rothrock is absolutely amazing in this one. There’s a fight scene between the two of them and, in one of the extras on the disc, she states that he was her favourite opponent on screen because their timing and rhythms in the fight scenes were so well matched. So they could do all this stuff a little easier than when they were fighting other people.

And as spectacular as this movie is... it just keeps getting bleaker. So twenty minutes or so before the end of the film is where I suspect the other, alternate, ‘happier’ endings must have cut in. But in his version... it’s just bleak and somehow perfect... and certainly surprising. So Cynthia Rothrock goes to an airplane hanger to have a big, fight showdown with her boss and his killers. She takes out all of the henchmen in a spectacular fight and then it’s just her and the chief of police, who also has good martial arts skills (as does practically every character in a Hong Kong movie, it would seem). After trading blows and so fourth he has her impaled to a wall with a giant corkscrew screwdriver thingy going through the top of her torso. Then he does the usual villain monologueing and I thought, that’s it. Let this be your last monologue because Cindy is going to turn the tables now. Except... she doesn’t. He pulls out the corkscrew in a welter of blood and then re-impales her through the throat, killing her and leaving her hanging limply on the wall. Wait... what? I did not see that coming at all. That’s a heck of a way to take me by surprise at this late stage in the proceedings.

Fear not though... prosecutor Ling-Chen turns up to save the day and face off against the big boss. They get into a fight and the villain fleas in a plane but not before our surviving hero manages to grab on and get on board. He kills the boss (who crashes the plane) and dives out to land in the ocean... and here’s where the next shocker occurs. Instead of swimming away from things as he would in a Hollywood movie... he’s now just a floating corpse because, as in real life, his body was falling far too fast to be able to survive the fall, water or not. So, we’re at the end of the picture... and pretty much every major character is now dead. Roll credits. Which is quite amazing because there’s also no way anyone can be left to clear the prosecutor’s name either (although, to be fair, he did also kill one of the crime bosses).

And that’s me done for Righting Wrongs, I think. Blows are traded, stunts are stunted, lives were lost and... it’s a pretty great movie, it has to be said. I certainly wasn’t expecting there to be no survivors left to tell the story at the end of the day, so to speak. Rothrock has gone on to say this was her favourite of the Hong Kong films she did and I can see why. Her fight scenes in this one are pretty great, even if there are a couple of moments where they decided that even she couldn’t do things like jump down a level in a supermarket, which is when you can see her stunt double is a guy. But that’s okay... you can see she did 99% of her own stuff in this, which is more than you would be allowed in a Hollywood production for sure. At the end of the day, I’m not sure many wrongs in this were actually righted but, hey, it looks pretty great and even the soundtrack isn’t that distracting so, I’d have to say I’m having a good time catching up with Rothrock’s ouevre so far.