The Young Vagabond (1985)

What do you get when a sloppy kung fu fighter meets up with an OCD Big Bad? A big mess. And that about sums up this kung fu farce.

The first half is a pseudo comedy. So Chan (Gordon Liu) and Jiabao (Wong Yu) are stepbrothers who are supposed to be school age. They are devoted to each other even though the stepmother loathes Chan because he stands in the way of her taking over the successful winery his father owns. The brothers get into and out of trouble and back into it. There's a kung fu soccer match and several run ins with the law. This was the hardest part of the movie for me to sit through and it didn't help that Gordon Liu and Wong Yu were too old to buy as school boys.

When Chan's teacher (Jason Pai) reveals his secret drunken kung fu method after drinking too much, the story takes a slight up-swing. Johnny Wang also appears as the Big Bad who literally doesn't like to get his hands or clothes dirty, a bad move when he favors shiny white clothes. Now the plot begins to thicken as the stepmom hires the Big Bad to kill her stepson which he's happy to do after the stepbrothers thwart his bank robbery. The light, silly comedy of the first half quickly devolves into the Manson Family Christmas as tragedy after tragedy strikes.

All the main characters do a fine a job of acting and of course, fighting. The music is too often reminiscent of the Keystone Cops which can pop up at the weirdest times. The best part of the movie is the final fight. There's no chit-chatting, no posturing, just a vicious no holds barred pay back.

The Young Vagabond had trouble finding the right blend of comedy and tragedy which culminated in moments of inspired fights overshadowed by the tangled up mess of a storyline.

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