Conman and the Kung Fu Kid

For fun and profit, this rips off Leone's Fistful of Dynamite by translating Coburn's ex-IRA bomber into a compulsive gambling swindler, and Steiger's greedy Mexican thug into a scrofulous oaf on the run from his fiancée. Most Hong Kong action movies as Western-influenced as this wind up as mixtures of lobotomised Chinese popular culture and crass Hollywood plagiarism. This is the happy exception: since it skips all of Leone's more provocative overtones and uses the rambling plot merely to showcase the two lead actors, it retains most of its Chinese identity, and emerges as one of the most genial of its kind. Henry Yue Young and Wu Ma bounce from farce to cynicism and back in the title roles; details are often abrasive or amusing (the swindler severing his 'offending' hand when he's caught cheating in a casino); and the film's anarchic politics keep the physical extravagances on an upswing.