The Outlaws (2017, South Korea). Director: Kang Yoon-sung.
Here are some fight scenes (and bits of fight scenes/random acts of violence) from the movie. IMO, leading star Ma Dong-seok (Westernized name: Don Lee) is currently the best and most convincing cinematic badass anywhere in the world. He's certainly far more believable (and far more relatable) in his roles than Dwayne Johnson is in his.
Raging Fire (2021; Hong Kong/China). Director: Benny Chan. Action director: Donnie Yen. Stunt coordinator: Kenji Tanigaki. Action choreographer: Kang Yu.
It's awesome that Donnie Yen is still going strong. I seem to remember he had stated a few years ago, before this film, that he was done performing action onscreen. Donnie is my age (59 now, and about 57 when Raging Fire was filmed). IMO, he is the last of the great decades-long martial arts movie stars. While Iko Uwais and Tony Jaa are great, they haven't even approached the decades, nor amassed the body of work WITHIN those decades, that Donnie has. And neither Tony nor Iko have maintained the momentum their careers had started with.
Donnie is in the final leg of his career as a martial arts action star, and after he quits performing action in front of the camera, it's difficult to imagine who's going to take over from here. Ma Dong-seok (AKA, Don Lee) is The Man in South Korean action cinema and simple, brutal, hard-core fisticuffs. But Donnie was the master of onscreen martial artistry after Jackie Chan's unequaled, decades-long run wound down.
Notorious Hong Kong Gangster Actor - Michael Chan Wai-Man
Chan Wai-Man (AKA Michael Chan) was and is still one of the very few onscreen badasses who were just as badass in real life. He starred in numerous Kung Fu movies and gangster films. He also continued to fight competitively long after he was already an established actor. Whether we agree with his lifestyle as a gangster or not, he was one of the most legitimate 'tough guys' of the movies.
Sammo Hung is my favorite martial arts actor, director, AND fight choreographer. He is probably second only to his former classmate Jackie Chan in terms of his body of work. Like Jackie, he got involved in the film industry as a child actor 60 years ago. He is now 70 years old.
People unfamiliar with Sammo underestimate him because of his overweight physique, which he's had for his entire adult life. But at his peak, Sammo displayed some of the highest levels of skill and athleticism in cinematic history.
At his physical and creative peak (1970s and '80s), Sammo's martial arts and fight choreography were second to nobody's, not even Jackie Chan's. I also preferred peak-era Sammo's style of comedy over Jackie's; Sammo's comedy could be more subtle, as well as unexpected, than Jackie's, and Sammo's gags did not always require slapstick. He also played serious scenes with greater subtlety and genuine emotion than Jackie. Sammo is the only director I know of who, at his creative peak, was capable of inserting comedy into scenes of emotional tragedy.
Sammo's fight choreography was extremely physical, with lots of heavy contact. He also tended to bring out performers' best; many actors and performers looked better in Sammo's films than in films by other directors. And in serious scenes, Sammo could actually make you care about the characters. It is no exaggeration to say that Sammo Hung is a genius.
While Sammo Hung is my favorite martial arts actor, Shintaro Katsu (as Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman) remains my favorite actor of any character. Having portrayed Zatoichi in 26 movies from 1962 to 1989, Shintaro Katsu's portrayal of the character, his personality and his quirks, were deep and complex, which made the character believable.
Bruce Lee had been a huge fan of the Zatoichi movies. Bruce's basic concept of a Shaolin monk with a price on his head, wandering the Old West, that ultimately became the Kung Fu TV series that starred David Carradine, was clearly based on the Zatoichi film series. Zatoichi, a blind master of his own unconventional, single-handed, reverse grip style of sword fighting, who had a price on his head, wandered the width and breadth of Japan, helping free commoners from their oppressors. The end of each film showed Zatoichi leaving the community he just saved, walking off into the distance, alone once more.
Bruce Lee had very badly wanted Shintaro Katsu to appear in one of his movies, but for whatever reason, Katsu refused. But as a gesture of goodwill, he sent two actors who had worked in his movies, Riki Hashimoto and Jun Katsumura, to go to Hong Kong to appear in Bruce's film. That movie turned out to be Fist of Fury (1972). It's just as well that Shintaro Katsu refused to appear in it himself, as his character would have lost to Bruce Lee's character onscreen. And Shintaro Katsu was far too good to just be squashed by Bruce Lee in a movie.
Five Deadly Venoms (AKA, The Five Venoms; 1978, Hong Kong). Director: Chang Cheh. Action directors: Leung Ting, Lu Feng, & Robert Tai.
Starring: Chiang Sheng, Kuo Chui, Lu Feng, Lo Meng, Wei Pai, Ku Feng, Dick Wei, Wang Lung-Wei, Sun Shu-Pei, etc.
Full movie. English-dubbed version.
AFAIK, this is the only full-length, HD version of a classic Kung Fu movie from Shaw Brothers Studio available to watch for free online. How Black Belt Magazine was able to secure the rights to post it in its entirety is a mystery to me. Hong Kong's Celestial Pictures was the company that remastered the entire Shaw Brothers film library, and is very diligent in removing any remastered SB material on YouTube not posted by Celestial themselves. If Black Belt posted this without permission, it may be removed sooner or later.
Five Deadly Venoms remains a classic, and was the first film that featured (in major roles) what would later become known as the Venom Mob, an ensemble cast who would go on to appear together in many Shaw Brothers films directed by Chang Cheh. IMO, this and many other old-school Hong Kong Kung Fu movies of that era, were more fun, more creative, and far superior to the ones coming out of Mainland China the past couple decades or more.
The main actors are:
Chiang Sheng (the last disciple)
Phillip Kwok (AKA, Kuo Chui; The Lizard)
Lu Feng (The Centipede)
Wei Pai (The Snake)
Sun Chien (The Scorpion)
Lo Meng (The Toad)
Of this group, Wei Pai was only in a few of the Venom Mob films.
Lo Meng, The Toad, once an impressive physical specimen, is (sadly) now probably more familiar to young(er) fans of Donnie Yen's Ip Man franchise as 'Master Law', the goofy Kung Fu teacher who always loses fights in embarrassing fashion in Ip Man 2, 3 & 4.
This is basically a period drama with lots of intrigue, but to anyone even slightly familiar with the actors and the way they moved, there is no mystery as to who is who, even when their characters were thinly-disguised in masks.