He was jealous of Bruce Lee, and wanted to ape James Bond: in The Man from Hong Kong, Jimmy Wang Yu got his chance

When Jimmy Wang Yu took on the leading role in Brian Trenchard-Smith’s film The Man from Hong Kong in 1975, the martial arts actor’s star was waning in Asia

Wang, long jealous of Bruce Lee, hoped the Bond-like film would propel his career to new heights – but, despite positive reviews, it did not click with viewers

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Jimmy Wang Yu in a still from The Man from Hong Kong (1975). In the film, Wang thought he had found something that would propel him to Bruce Lee-level international fame. It did not. Photo: Hong Kong Film Archive

Richard James Havis

Published: 4:15am, 5 May 2024Updated: 7:06am, 7 May 2024

Corrected [7:04am, 7 May, 2024]

[7:04am, 7 May, 2024]
An earlier version of this story incorrectly cited The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires as an example of a Golden Harvest international co-production.

The Man from Hong Kong is the most unusual film in martial arts legend Jimmy Wang Yu’s long résumé.

Co-produced by Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest studio and filmed in Australia by British-born director Brian Trenchard-Smith, it is a rough-and-tumble mix of explosions, action, car chases and martial arts which draws heavily on the James Bond franchise.

The film, which performed fairly well in Hong Kong and the West upon its original release in 1975, was disregarded for some 30 years, perhaps because of its association with substandard Golden Harvest international co-productions.

But The Man From Hong Kong has aged well, and its hammy 1970s clichés now evoke nostalgia rather than ridicule.

The martial arts scenes, which were choreographed by Sammo Hung Kam-bo on his first jaunt outside Asia, are top notch and very much in the Hong Kong style, while the stunts, created and often performed by notorious Australian stuntman Grant Page, look extremely dangerous – they were.

As Trenchard-Smith, who was making his directorial debut, has noted, the Australian crew did not know how to make an action film like this and were working things out as they went along.

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