Challenge of the Masters

Challenge of the Masters was Gordon Liu’s first take on the famous Wong Fei Hung. This time WFH was an obnoxious young man whose father refused to train him to fight. He made trouble all over town until a stranger helped facilitate a teacher for him.

Wong Fei Hung’s friends all train with Master Lin. His father refuses to let him train because his temper is too uncontrolled. During the yearly firecracker contest, Master Pang’s students cheat and fight dirty to defeat Lin’s students. Officer Chuan Wing is hunting a thief and murderer who uses a lethal kick. During one of WFH’s many skirmishes around town he thinks he met the thief who resides at the Pang school. Chuan Wing convinces Master Lu Ah Tsai who had trained WFH’s dad to train the son as well. The cocky new student and teacher travel north to train for two years.

This version of WFH was insufferable. I kept hoping the arrogant toddler would get his butt handed to him over and over. Even with his new sifu he was hot headed and ready to fight at the drop of a hat. Maybe that would have been okay if the fights were good. There were really only two fights. Lau Kar Leung vs Lau Kar Wing and later Lau Kar Leung vs. Gordon Liu. Sadly, both fights were rather short. The two free for alls in the firework contests were just school yard brawls. Even the training sequences with Gordon vs a fortune in dishware were lackluster.

There was no mistaking who the troublemakers were going to be when Chiang Tao and Fung Hak On walked on screen. This WFH was just as bad as those characters at the start until he miraculously, and off screen, turned into a saint that could confer transformation with a look later in the film. Ugh.

Watching Wong Fei Hung throwing hissyfits was not entertaining for me. Watching the Lau brothers fight was. Quick and talented, I needed more of that and less of negative impulse driven characters swaggering around. The complete 180 of WFH and the Pang crew and murderer was unearned and irritatingly bad writing. Rated on a curve.

14 March 2026

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Top tier opening credits

It's fascinating that for his second film as a director, Lau Kar-Leung would choose to create his own version of the Wong Fei-hung legend, ever the visionary though, Challenge of the Masters sees Lau decide to concentrate his attentions on a young, callow Wong Fei-hung in what was a near-revolutionary statement at the time. Although the film's title implies plenty of duelling, it actually thrives less on narrative surprise and more on the sheer pleasure of watching mastery forged through discipline, pain, and stubborn will. This is not the confident folk hero of later stories, but a hot-headed, frequently humiliated young man whose talent is obvious and whose character is very much under construction. Obviously, being Lau's second film as a director yields plenty of rough edges; his filmmaking style not quite knuckled down yet. Grounding the limited action in a sense of lineage and authenticity, the few martial arts bouts that do make an appearance are to his usual standard, although they aren't the focal point of the film, as more emphasis is given to rigorous and realistic training sequences. The sequences dominate the film, staged with an almost documentary clarity; every improvement feels earned, every strike the product of repetition and refinement. Being this is Gordon Liu's first leading role, he plays Wong with an engaging mix of arrogance and vulnerability, a brilliant feat as he lets us enjoy both his cocky missteps and his gradual emotional tempering. There's a gentle humour running throughout, especially in the mentor-student dynamic, but it never undermines the seriousness of the training or the respect for tradition. While the simple narrative thrust of Challenge of the Masters is enough for most filmmakers, a director of Lau Kar-Leung's lustre requires something a bit meatier to get his teeth into, yet the film still manages to offer up a well-balanced combination of action, drama and moral philosophy, albeit with repetitive redundancy and some wobbly pacing. Opening credits are top-tier, though.

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