Legend of the Wolf (1997)

"You have your one chance, you don't get a second"

Legend of the Wolf marked Donnie Yen’s first official directorial credit. He was also a writer, martial arts director, and producer for it. The action was fast, furious, heads flying, and blood spurting violence, briefly interrupted with a blossoming friendship and old love.

When a young man discovers the legendary Wolf is still alive, the Wolf’s associate, Wai, takes him to the old man. Ben Chan wants him to kill someone. Before the Wolf agrees, he tells the eager youth that he has to listen to a story…Not long after WWII, Fung Man Hin stumbles across Brother Wai in a run-down village on his journey to find the Seven Saints Temple. Wai and the villagers decide to con or steal as much money from the stranger as they can. On the way to the temple the two men are attacked by machete wielding bandits. Man Hin dispatches them, saving Wai’s life in the process. Later, Man Hin takes on several bandits at the temple and is wounded in the process. Wai carries Man Hin to a shack where Wai Yee attends him and just happens to be the woman who has been waiting for him for seven years. Her lover has no memory of her for he is suffering from the old trope of amnesia. When the worst gang of bandits led by Ben Lam arrive at the village looking for him all hell breaks out and deadly secrets are revealed.

Legend of the Wolf was decidedly low budget. Most of the fights took place in the woods or by the ocean much like an old school Taiwanese kung fu flick. The few buildings were scarcely standing. The story, especially the romance, was ill developed. Because he couldn’t remember Yee, it came across one-sided. His past and Yee’s with the bandits was glossed over. Instead of a grand romance, the writing pointed to the fact that she was a completely devoted girlfriend and disposable character. The quickly developed friendship with an energetic Dayo Wong as Wai was better developed than the romance.

Yen tried to make the film artistic in the present time, utilizing blue, green, and red lights to highlight every scene with different camera angles. Whether in the present or the past he kept the camera up close so that you could count every pore on an actor’s face, even during fight scenes. The exception to the rule was the earliest fight which was filmed in the dark leaving much to the imagination. By having considerable amounts of the movie's action filmed up close, most of the hits and kicks were shrouded. He also over cranked many of the fights causing the movements to fly by in fast motion. When Donnie wasn’t fighting, the action was abysmal, the kind of fights almost anyone could look like a martial arts expert the way they were edited.

There were some unintentionally funny scenes. When Donnie was chasing down the bandits and hit two rocks at them several guys fell down. The same thing happened when he threw a bamboo stick. One bandit used a revolver that obviously held 6 bullets, but could shoot 20 times before needing to reload! The last few fights were better than some of the others, but were still filmed too close to catch the full moves. Ben Lam belonged to Jackie Chan’s stunt team which should have freed Yen to show the fight from enough distance to capture all the moves, but too often the hits and kicks were obscured with the camera practically sitting on their noses. There were segments of the fights that were highly entertaining when they weren’t blurred or sped up. Something I haven’t seen before in a kung fu movie was Donnie using a machete like a rock and skipping it across a creek. A purely shallow viewpoint---Donnie looked lean and mean and cut to shreds as he fought the bandits.

Legend of the Wolf wasn’t a horrible first directorial attempt, but it tried to be more than it was and failed. Donnie Yen is nearly always entertaining to watch, but this film might be more for fans of the genre and era as long as they set the bar low going into it.

11/25/23

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