Plot wise The Prodigal Son is pretty much just a spin on the usual themes of being the best martial artist, honour and revenge. In much more detail though (big spolers ahead, as basically the whole story is told), Biao is a rich man's son, and he is also regarded as the best fighter in his town, and he knows everyone sees him this way. What he does not know, though, is that all his fights are staged, as the people he fights are paid, by his father via his servent, to lose. This becomes clear when an opera group comes to town and his friends cause some trouble and are beat up by the lead of the opera (Lam Ching Ying). Naturally they go get Biao to come teach this person a lesson, but his kung-fu is far inferior, and as Ying won't accept any bribes, Biao loses. Realising that everything he thought isn't real, he seeks to be taught by Ying - but is refused. Persistence is one of his stronger points, however, and to aid him in his quest his father buys him the opera group so that he can travel with them, but still YIng refuses to teach him any Kung-Fu.

Enter now Frankie Chan. During one stop of the opera group, a fight breaks out and Ying is forced to fight back, making his kung-fu prowess painfully clear. This is seen by Chan, who is a royal son, out to challenge and defeat all kung-fu masters and prove himself the best. Seeking a fight with Ying, Chan invites the entire opera group to dinner, where he issues his challenge which is refused by Ying, as he has nothing to prove, but needless to say a fight proceeds. Alas Ying is asthmatic, and has a outbreak mid-fight. Not wanting to take advantage of this Chan stops fighting, but with the full intention of continuing once Ying is better.

Meanwhile Chan's bodyguards have other orders. While they are there to look after Chan, they also have orders from his father that he is not to get hurt, and they are to eliminate anyone who looks as though they could defeat Chan. This they suspect of Ying, and that night they plan to carry out his murder. Not wanting any witnesses the entire opera group is murdered, but Ying is saved by Biao, and they flee to Ying's home, where his brother (Sammo Hung) also lives. It is here where Ying is finally persuaded into training Biao in kung-fu, and Hung too gets involved in the teaching.

I may have just about told the entire story, but the plot is holds no surprises, and is far from the main focus of the film. The main attraction has got to be the fight scenes. Simply put, they are superb. There is no wire-fu here. The characters cannot jump 40 feet in the air or fly. Everything they do is physically possible to do (by them anyway, certainly not by me!), which makes the fight all the more astonishing. To add to the realism, during the fights you could actually see the injuries and bruises forming on the characters after they had been hit. There was none of the getting beat around the head repeatedly, then only a trickle of blood comes from the nose. Here there are big purple bruises and large amounts of swelling, see Chan's head after the headbutt in the final fight... the swelling grows and looks very sore. Granted the make up effects aren't that great, and the swollen lump may look a quite fake at times, given the film's age and the ability to use your own imagination, the fact that the swelling is there is enough for me.

The fights themselves were intended to accurately portray Wing Chun Kung Fu, as before making the film Sammo Hung et al. were aware that there were no films out there which give a good representation of the Wing Chun style. This was mainly due to Wing Chun not really being that photogenic for films. It didn't have the fancy 'wow' sort of factor to it which other styles of Kung Fu did have. If a martial arts film was going to sell, the fights had to look good. While a few liberties may have been taken in the protrayal of Wing Chun, Hung et al. still managed to show the true essence of Wing Chun and make it look very, very good. Wing Chun masters were on set for consultation to ensure that the fights and philosophies were as true as possible. It isn't until Biao is actually being taught Wing Chun by Ying that the foundations for the style are explicitly told, but the verbal explanations are all followed by training scenes putting what was said into practice, allowing you to see the true art in practice.

The choreography in the fight scenes is complex to basically the right level. They aren't too complex that things look confused, rushed or badly executed, but they aren't too simple that they become boring. Elbows, hands, heads, feet and shoulders are all used as effective weapons, and if the interview in the extras are anything to go by, and this you can clearly see yourself in the film, those weapons were used quite heavily even though it was just a film. During the fights contact is being made and, from what Frankie Chan says, it was very painfull to film those fights. Their pain is our reward though, as The Prodigal Son is simply one of the best period martial arts films I've seen, and from what I gather one of the most authentic Wing Chun films put to film.

I'm not going to comment much at all on the acting, as it isn't really important. To put it bluntly, everyone gets their job done. Biao's servant is certainly annoying, but I got used to him after a while. That's it for comments on the acting.

The only slightly negative comments which I will put towards The Prodigal Son is that it is slightly uneven in tone, but then that is a very common characteristic of a lot of Hong Kong cinema. There are some very light hearted scenes which are there purely for comedy purposes, like Sammo's kung fu calligraphy scene. I personally love that scene on its own, as seeing him jump and tumble around so effortlessly and with such agility is amazing in itself. Other scenes are incredibly bleak and violent though, and at complete contrast to the comedy, like the opera troup massacre. For some this imbalance in tone may be a slight put off as far as overall enjoyment is concerned, but those who are seasoned Hong Kong cinema viewers, you'll probably be able to easily take it in your stride as you should be so used to it by now!

The pain, time, research and effort that went in to making this film certainly paid off. Over 20 years since the film was made, and it is still heralded as one of the best traditional martial arts films ever made. I agree with that view, and emplore you to buy yourself a copy of The Prodigal Son if you don't own one already.

Audio & Subtitles
The Hong Kong Legends release of The Prodigal Son comes with DD5.1 Cantonese and English soundtracks. I'll be commenting on the Cantonese track. While it is a 5.1 track, most of the audio comes from the front centre speaker. Only a few effects like fire and other general ambient sort of noises are spread around the speakers. On the whole I wasn't really that impressed with the soundtrack. A lot of the effects sounded a little "twangy", to quote someone who I watched the film with. I don't know whether this could be a cause of the age of the original material or not, but it certainly didn't sound that natural on quite a lot of ocassions. Also, in the behind the scenes operal fight, the sound completely cuts out for a second, which is a little distracting, but nothing that serious.

The subtitles are removable, and are a nice white font with a black border. Spelling and and grammar, as you would expect, are absolutely perfect. However, where the subs are seriously let down is in the translation. In quite a few places the subtitles are clearly westernised, which is something I hate, moreso in Chinese period movies, as the language and tone of the subtitles just simply don't fit the setting in places. Also, the word Kata is used in the subtitles when talking about a martial arts form... now Kata is a Japanese word for forms in Japanese martial arts, like Karate, NOT Chinese martial arts. I think the translation is reasonably accurate in general terms, just it has been westernised down.

Quality
The anamorphic widescreen presentation of The Prodigal Son is ok on the whole, with a few notable faults. Firstly, the print is rather soft. The is most clearly seen in the outdoor grassy scenes. There isn't much detail in the grass, with it looking more like green clumps than lots of individual strands of grass. The other fault, and this one I found to be far more distracting, was that on the bottom of the print, and fading out as it went up the print, with it completely gone less than a third of the way up, was a blue sort of hue to the colours. It is far more evident in some scenes than others. When I first noticed it I thought it was going to be unique to that section of the film, as when it was being filmed they had maybe used not such a good reel of film, or something like that. But no, in a few other completely seperate scenes the blue hue was also there. Cause? No idea. I was a little worried that it might have been my TV, but I've had it on since I watched the film, and I've not noticed anything wrong with the colours. The last screen grab shows this blue hue quite clearly. Good things now though. The print is very clean. There is hardly a speckle in the entire film. Grain levels look to be very low, and with the exception of the blue hue thing, colours look good.

DVD & Extras
There is a reasonable amount in the way of extras on the Hong Kong Legends The Prodigal Son DVD. First up there is a Tribute To Lam Ching Ying. This is an entirely text based affair. Next up there are two trailers for Prodigal Son. The UK trailer and the original theatrical trailer. Then there are two interview films. The first interviews Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and Frankie Chan. This is the best of the interviews as the three involved all relive what it was like to make the film, how they tried as much as possible to make the film as authentic in its Wing Chun as possible, and how much pain they went through in filming the fight scenes! The second interview is with Guy Lai, who is a Wing Chun master, and was the martial arts consultant for Prodigal Son. This is a very informative piece on Wing Chun, and the interview segments are interspersed with Wing Chun demonstrations from Sifu Austin Goh. Next there is an Art of Wing Chun text based extra, which tries to state what Wing Chun is and give its history, among other things. For those that like them, there is an audio commentary from Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan. While I've heard nothign but good things about the insight and level of knowledge he shows in these commentaries, I have yet to listen to one. Finally there are trailers for 6 other Hong Kong Legends released films.

Overall
Overall, I cannot recommend this film enough. If you like traditional martial arts then The Prodigal Son is sure to please. All the fighting cast put on the action performance of their lives making the fights look powerful, lethal but most importantly of all, realistic. Over 20 years old but still at the top of the traditional martial arts pile... that can't be a bad thing, can it?!

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