Eastern Condors by Sammo Hung (1987)
Eastern Condors is basically Sammo Hung and Golden Harvest’s attempt at making The Dirty Dozen, only set in Vietnam and featuring plenty of martial arts hijinks. But those hijinks prove to be a problem. Sometimes, Eastern Condors is a gritty war film, replete with POWs, traitors, and mad generals. At least, that’s the film that Hung seems to imagine that he’s starring in, if his perpetual stoicism is any indication. But there’s also a lot of silly slapstick humor like you might expect from an older Jackie Chan film, which makes Eastern Condors uneven to say the least. Which is a shame, because when Eastern Condors focuses on the action, be it of the kung fu kind or the pyrotechnics kind, it’s pretty amazing. Corey Yuen and Yuen Biao’s martial arts and stunt choreography is surprisingly brutal at times, and Hung films a lot of it in glorious slow motion. Which means you can basically see the stunt performers get concussions in agonizing detail.
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