(1978)
 

Who ever said chivalry was dead?

Last Hurrah For Chivalry (1978) is traditional swordplay action movie, a genre called wuxia in China. John tried to refresh wuxia genre, though, make some Woo style on it. There is many elements, which can be seen in his films many times after this one; friends and brothers and their loyalties to each other. 

Woo himself calls it as a pre-version of A Better Tomorrow and without doubt there can be seen some similarities in stories. After all, Woo says that his gangster movies are modern versions of traditional Chinese kungfu movies. Chinese knights with swords, staffs and fists are replaced with gangsters and polices and they use modern weapons like guns, grenades and all that stuff. Last Hurrah is Woo's version of original Chinese gungfu movie. And it was filmed in traditional ways using long shots of the expertly choreographed fights, without picture editing, no camera or wire trick. Actors really did that what you see and therefore they knew their kungfu. We must remember that at the same time new wave directors like Tsui hark, who was just making his first films as director, were making martial arts films with a little actual fight scenes. Tsui Hark's Butterfly Murders among many others was one of them, fighting was showed through fast and blurry cuts, so audience could get the impression of fighting. In Last Hurrah Woo makes strong gungfu film, but he also puts some comedy in it, later Jackie Chan made martial arts comedy very popular genre with his incredible works. However Last hurrah also as a kung fu parody, especially Drunken Buddha fight is very fun to watch. But I think English translation misses some of the comedy part. In Chinese version characters have nicknames (or so I've been told) like Magic Sword, Green Shirt and sleeping Wizard. Woo made a good kungfu film but it was one of the last ones of it's kind. Kung fu/wuxia films were out of date and new waves were coming to Hong Kong cinema. And also Woo was a bit tired ot the period martial arts epics and he wanted to make something else. Last Hurrah was his tribute to his former teacher Chang Cheh, the Master of martial arts film.

Quotes:

• We can't die, we haven't finished our wine yet.
• I don't need a sword to beat up a dog.
• Dreams usually lead you nowhere.
• Sometimes a hero is not worth dime.

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