The Brothers [差人大佬博命仔 or 龍兄虎弟] (1979)
Starring Lau Wing, Danny Lee, Chow Lai-Kuen, Ku Feng, Nam Hung, Chiang Tao, Ricky Wong Chung-Tsu, Harada Riki, Chan Shen, Alan Chan Kwok-Kuen, Wang Han-Chen, Yang Chi-Ching, Wong Ching-Ho, Hung Ling-Ling, Cheng Kei-Ying, Ng Hong-Sang, Fung Ging-Man
Directed by Hua Shan
Expectations: Not much, I don’t even know if there’s much martial arts in this one.
The Brothers is a remake of the 1975 Indian classic, Deewaar, which was apparently one of the first Indian films to feature martial arts sequences inspired by Hong Kong movies. I know very little about Indian film, but from what I understand this became a huge trend going forward; the HK-style martial arts were certainly in full effect in 1995’s Alluda Majaka! So The Brothers is a Hong Kong film inspired by an Indian film inspired by HK cinema! Due to this, it has a different feel than your standard ’70s Hong Kong movie, with more of a focus on interpersonal melodrama.
I racked my brain trying to come up with anything else quite like it in the Shaw Brothers catalog, fusing melodrama, martial arts, and gunplay in such a way (presumably like Deewaar before it). At its heart, The Brothers is a modern-day drama, but it also just so happens to feature action on-par with a straight-up action movie. Obviously Chang Cheh and others had crafted films delivering side-by-side drama and action, but The Brothers feels like an entirely different approach to storytelling. I’m not sure how to express it, honestly, but my assumption is that this a carried-over element from Deewaar. The action is also so varied that it feels at times like a proto-Jackie Chan film, or a proto-John Woo heroic bloodshed sort of thing, with the specific Shaw elements of the production tying it to older Chang Cheh genre experiments like Vengeance and The Singing Killer. The closest thing might actually be Hua Shan’s earlier film To Kill a Jaguar, as while that film is a more modern-day take on wuxia, it mixes in gunplay and martial arts in a similar way.
Ultimately, my thoughts turning towards John Woo were correct, as The Brothers apparently helped inspire A Better Tomorrow. Woo’s primary inspiration was Patrick Lung Kong’s 1967 film The Story of a Discharged Prisoner — they even share the same Chinese title: 英雄本色 — but it seems that it was cut with The Brothers. It’s a little hard to parse out without having seen The Story of a Discharged Prisoner, but similar themes, heroic bloodshed, and “brothers on opposite sides of the law” are all definitely present in The Brothers in ways that easily remind of A Better Tomorrow. Just to be clear, The Brothers isn’t on par with Woo’s film. Woo ran with the inspiration and created something cinema-shattering with A Better Tomorrow, fully realizing the potential of The Brothers. The dramatic elements of The Brothers are there, but — as much as I love them — the Shaw sets are a real detriment to their effectiveness. Imagine how much different A Better Tomorrow would play if it consistently cut between outdoor locations, indoor sets, and indoor “outdoor” street sets!
The Brothers opens with our titular brothers as children, in the forest outside their fishing village. The older brother, Zhang Zhi-Gang (later played by Lau Wing), fires his slingshot at some small birds, but instead he hits a hornets’ nest and his younger brother, Zhang Zhi-Qiang (played as an adult by Danny Lee), is stung in the face. Zhi-Gang prepares an herbal remedy for the sting, and this little sequence is a great window into their relationship. Zhi-Gang may cause trouble, but his love for his brother is an ever-present priority. As they age, their paths diverge. Zhi-Gang, seeing how much his brother idolizes the kids in school, commits himself to working to help his mother pay for his schooling. This eventually leads Zhi-Gang to a life of crime, all while Zhi-Qiang is off at a military academy preparing to become a policeman. Side note: this is one of the earliest major policeman roles for Danny Lee, who later made a career out of that. Just looking through his filmography, it appears only Cheng Kang’s 1977 film The Call Girls beats The Brothers, featuring Lee in a lead, policeman role.
The seeds of drama are deep in this one, and I didn’t even mention the traumatic events concerning their father that set the whole film in motion. Judging from what’s here, I’m sure Deewaar is quite the film; I’m definitely interested in seeing the full breadth of the story and how the HK influence plays within it. Even with such deep roots, I don’t think Hua Shan brings the drama to its full potential in this version. For instance, the bridge they live under as kids is barely mentioned or shown early in the film, but it is meant to have significant emotional resonance when it is brought up later in the film. The drama does succeed in a few moments, though, where the overwhelming circumstances are undeniably tense, sad, and meaningful. You feel for both brothers, as well, amplifying the implications of the situations. If only the whole movie lived up to these moments. It was at these times when I thought the most of A Better Tomorrow, because John Woo was able to bring his film to emotional levels that are only glimpsed here. I imagine part of Hua Shan’s problem — along with the aforementioned Shaw sets — was attempting to condense a three-hour Indian film into 89 minutes, although looking at Deewaar‘s plot synopsis they managed to cram a whole lot of it into The Brothers!
The action was handled by Yuen Clan brothers Yuen Cheung-Yan and Yuen Shun-Yi, and it’s great throughout. Not in a “technical perfection of the Venoms” sort of way, but more in its combination of elements that were uncommon at the time. The warehouse fight features a lot of “picking up whatever is close at hand as an improvised weapon,” and if that doesn’t scream “classic Jackie Chan style” I don’t know what does. Obviously, it’s not on par with classic ’80s/’90s Jackie, but you can see the seeds of the ideas here. Similarly, the inclusion of guns feels ahead of its time. I’m struggling to write about the action as I normally would, because while it is great and it perfectly accents the film, it is not a main focus so there isn’t all that much. It’s more the cherry on top of the drama than anything else. It’s a Shaw film with action by Yuen brothers, you know it’s going to have some fun action. It just plays very different than an action movie.
The Brothers is ultimately a movie I’m very glad to have seen. It’s better for the ripples surrounding it, than the movie itself, but I think any fan with a deep love of Hong Kong cinema — and specifically heroic bloodshed — should check this one out for its influence and its unique blend of drama and action. It’s surprising it isn’t talked about more, but I imagine that’s due to its relative obscurity (and perhaps its less-than-perfect execution). It would seem it wasn’t very popular in Hong Kong, either, ranking #81/100 at the 1979 HK Box Office. To put that into perspective, The Reckless Cricket made roughly twice as much and ranked #41/100, while the top film, Jackie’s Fearless Hyena, made about 10 times as much as The Brothers. In any case, its unique blend definitely deserves more eyes, so it’s nice that Celestial recently uploaded it to their free YouTube page (see below)!
Next up in this chronological journey through the Shaw Brothers Martial Arts catalog is John Law Ma’s Monkey Kung Fu, starring director/choreographer extraordinaire Ching Siu-Tung! See ya then (hopefully soon)!