This is a film that is more likely to work for hardcore fans of Hong Kong cinema than HK-curious mainstream viewers. Stuntman is an action-drama that folds in on itself with a tale about the contemporary Hong Kong film industry facing an identity crisis in which well-known figures from its own past appear. The charming opening sequence, set in the 1980s, spoofs the zooms and editing style of that era’s classic fight-driven films – and then pulls back to reveal we’re actually watching a movie being made, back in the 80s.
The action-director character is called Sam Lee (played first in the 80s time frame by Lam Yiu Sing, and then for the rest of the film by Stephen Tung, who was himself an action director-stuntman back in the day). While shooting a particularly tricky stunt that requires a stuntman to leap off a bridge on to a moving lorry, things go wrong and the stuntman ends up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Cut to the present day, and Sam is working in traditional Chinese medicine and only occasionally sees his old film-making friends, down at the martial arts club. He’s estranged from his daughter Cherry (Cecilia Choi, making the most of a thinly written role), a potter planning her wedding and unsure about how much to let Sam back into her life.
An old friend persuades Sam to help direct the stunts on a new film, and before you know it he’s back to his envelope-pushing ways. Meanwhile, Long (Terrance Lau) works for his brother in the logistics business but wants to break into the stunt world. He gets a job on the set after impressing Sam on the street, and his moxie proves inspirational. There’s a great many stirring speeches about the spirit of Hong Kong and how great things were back in the old days, so much so that you wonder if the film risks crossing the party line as it invokes the island’s past history before the current authorities took over. The stunts are duly impressive and filmed with vim, but the party apparatchiks would probably be happy with how thuddingly sentimental the film is, and how conservative it is about family values.
• Stuntman is in UK and Irish cinemas from 11 October.
