Knockabout

Two brothers get by on small swindles. One day the old man they try to cheat handles them easily, and both want to become his students. He agrees and really teaches them. Then it emerges who the man is and what he is running from. One brother is killed, and the other has to learn a new way from a beggar. Sammo Hung directs and plays the beggar. Yuen Biao takes the lead and Lau Kar-wing plays the teacher. It is Yuen Biao's first major leading role. He came out of the same Peking opera school as Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan and is held to be the strongest of the three in acrobatics; his work here is cited as the proof. The choreography is fast and rests entirely on acrobatics; the training passage with a skipping rope is among the best known scenes. The first half is comedy and the second is revenge; that shift, common in Hong Kong cinema, is made unusually hard here. The film counts among Sammo Hung's best as a director and among the mature examples of comedy joined to kung fu. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hong Kong kung fu comedy and followers of Yuen Biao. Who it is not for: the script is thin, the comic sections run long, and the break in tone is abrupt.