The Iron-Fisted Monk

After his uncle is killed by the Manchus who run the province, Hawker goes to Shaolin to learn kung fu and take revenge. His patience runs out, he leaves the training unfinished and comes back. In town he meets a monk who is teaching the workers at a factory how to defend themselves, and when the Manchus strike again the two of them decide to settle it. This was Sammo Hung's first film as a director and stands at the beginning of the kung fu comedy wave. The tone is not straight comedy, though: broad gags sit right beside genuinely brutal violence, and what is done to the villagers is not softened at all. The choreography and Hung's own performance are among the best the genre has, and anyone watching now should know what the film's hardness involves before starting.