Furies (2023)
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
Fast and furious rape-revenge movie from the multitalented Veronica Ngo, making her third directorial feature in a fascinating career which has seen her move from singing star to Hollywood to Vietnam’s biggest action filmmaker. A prequel to the excellent 2019 martial arts film, Furie – in which Ngo played a mother on the hunt for her kidnapped daughter – as director, she is unflinching in her depiction of Ho Chi Minh City’s seedy, sleazy side, and the violent criminal underworld who frequent it. As an actor, she plays a different character from before, Jacqueline, a mysterious matria ..read more
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Jawan (2023)
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
Hindi-language Indian action epic which crosses generations, hairstyles, and musical genres. Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan – aged 56 – defies the laws of aging (and gravity) playing two characters in the same film; a father and son ex-soldier vigilante duo who use extreme methods to make political statements and inspire social change in modern India. He holds up a metro train in order to con a rich scoundrel into donating his wealth to help India’s poverty-stricken farming community. He kidnaps the health minister to prove how much the state hospitals are lacking in basic provisions and vita ..read more
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Polite Society (2023)
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
Refreshing, kooky UK indie from Nida Manzoor – making her feature film directorial debut – about two warring sisters in a British-Pakistani household in London. Teenager Ria Khan (Priya Kansara, exemplary) is a kung fu obsessed wannabe stunt performer with her own YouTube channel – “Khan Fu” – who finds it tricky to adjust to the news that her beloved older sister, Lena (Ritu Arya), is arranged to be married to the mummy’s boy, Silam Shah (Akshay Khanna). In a sinister twist similar to Get Out, there’s a brewing sense that not all is what it seems in the Shah mansion, so Ria and her school fri ..read more
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Ballerina (2023)
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
Jeon Jong-seo steals the show in this slick Korean revenge thriller which follows the trend for bad-ass, female-led Asian punch-a-thons like The Villainess and the excellent series My Name. As ice-cold killer Ok-ju, she ends up smashing, shooting and flame-throwing her way through a gang of Korean drug pushers in her quest to find and kill Choi (Kim Ji-hoon), a billionaire playboy with a side-hustle in rape and revenge porn. One of his victims is Ok-ju best friend (and lover?), a ballerina named Min-hee (Park Yu-rim), who ends up taking her own life after being assaulted by Choi, sparking ..read more
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KFMG Podcast S07 Episode 95: Marko Zaror
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
“I was so sure that this is what I loved to do, that there was no doubt in my mind that my life was going to be related to this.” From Chile to Mexico to Hollywood – and back again – Marko Zaror’s incredible rise in the action world reached a new crescendo in 2023. Known as the ‘Latin Dragon’, Marko’s scene-stealing performance as the main heavy, Chidi, in Chad Stahelski’s masterpiece, John Wick: Chapter 4, saw him duel on-screen with fight legends Hiroyuki Sanada, Donnie Yen and Keanu Reeves; meanwhile, back in his home country of Chile, he reunited with his childhood friend – the filmmaker E ..read more
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Profile: Marko Zaror
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
Date of birth: 10 June, 1978 (Santiago, Chile) Full name: Marko Zaror Aguad Nickname: The Latin Dragon Occupation: Actor, fight choreographer, producer. Style: Taekwondo, kickboxing, MMA, Judo, Aikido, Shotokan Karate Biography: Marko Zaror Aguad was born in Santiago, Chile. His Peruvian mother, Gina Aguad, was the first woman in Chile to receive a karate black belt. Inspired by Bruce Lee, he started training in martial arts from the age of six. His main martial art styles are taekwondo, kickboxing, and kung fu. He also has black belts in Judo and Aikido, and a green belt in Shotokan Kara ..read more
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Mandrill (2009)
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
Chilean writer, director and editor Ernesto Díaz Espinoza and martial arts star Marko Zaror spoof James Bond movies for their third Spanish language indie actioner. The references are well-worn, with composer Rocco doing good work in adapting the John Barry style, and Zaror sprucing up nicely to play smooth-talking, ass-kicking super spy Antonia Espinoza, aka Mandrill. He’s the kind of guy who seduces a woman in a swimming pool before blowing someone’s brains out. As a kid, he witnesses the death of his mother and father at the hands of a drug baron known as ‘Cyclops’, subsequently crafting hi ..read more
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The Fist of the Condor (2023)
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
A soporific, ambitious meditation on why we study the martial arts; is it for power and ego, or to achieve something more transcendent? Originally designed as a sequence of vignettes, Marko Zaror plays twins in a yin-yang conceit – one brother is supposedly pure of heart and mind, the other is murderous and jealous. In his pursuit to steal the sacred manual of the “Masters of the Fist of Condor” – a style created by Zaror for the film, based on the national bird of Chile – the evil Zaror beats his own brother half to death and kills his kung fu master (played by Zaror’s own mother, the karate ..read more
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Redeemer (2014)
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
3M ago
The fourth film from the Chilean action partnership of director-writer Ernesto Díaz Espinoza and martial artist Marko Zaror, Latin America’s answer to Isaac Florentine and Scott Adkins. This movie, more than any of their others, attempts to wrestle with quite serious, existential themes, like free will, justice and divine retribution, produced in a Catholic country where religion still plays an integral part of daily life. The redeemer of the title is a feared, hooded, spectral figure doling out justice with his fists and feet, a vigilante (played by Zaror) taking out neo-Nazis, drug dealers a ..read more
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KFMG Podcast S07 Episode 94: Ric Meyers
Kung Fu Movie Guide
by Ben Johnson
4M ago
“I practice my style, which is called ‘Ric Fu’, and the subtitle is, ‘don’t hurt me’.” It has been over a decade since we last spoke in-depth to the author and kung fu movie expert, Ric Meyers – the man responsible for introducing much of America to the classics of martial arts cinema over a writing career spanning five decades. His books – including 1985’s ‘Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas’, 1995’s ‘The Encyclopedia of Martial Arts Movies’, 2001’s ‘Great Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan and More’, and 2011’s ‘Films of Fury’ project, which involved both ..read more
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