Sammo Hung once again tries to turn his son, Sammy, into a star with Choy Lee Fut, which has been recently released on US home video as Fight the Fight. The incredibly generic re-titling fits the nature of this film rather well. While there's nothing egregiously wrong with the proceedings, there's nothing particularly exciting or inspiring, either, making this more of a film for a rainy day rental or late-night drunken viewing material rather than mandatory martial arts fare for connoisseurs of kung fu cinema.

The by-the-numbers plot has lil' Sammy playing Wai, a Chinese ex-pat living in England and making a living by being a paperboy and getting into fights alongside his buddy, Ken (Kane Kosugi, son of Japanese martial arts star Sho Kosugi). After a visit from Wai's dad (played by Sammo, who promptly disappears for most of the film) the duo head off to China to defend a martial arts school by being bought out by an evil corporation. And how are they going to be doing this? By holding a tournament, of course.

The dependence on plot devices straight out of 1980's B movies doesn't stop there, with Wai starting up a romance with Ha, who not only is an executive with the corporation, but she's the girlfriend of his rival in the tournament. Da-da-dum! Can you feel the suspense? If you're over the age of eleven, the answer is probably not really. So, as you might expect, sitting through the exposition scenes in Choy Lee Fut is often an exercise in boredom, where the most exciting thing going on is trying to keep your finger off of the fast-forward button for any extended period of time.

Fortunately, the fights do pick business up enough to elevate Choy Lee Fut enough to at least the realm of the average. Besides some extremely cheap looking greenscreen effects employed during flashback sequences, viewers can definitely tell that the actors here have talent in the martial arts department, even when their characters are saddled with silly names such as X-Man. But there's not enough in the way of fisticuffs presented to make Choy Lee Fut anything other than yet another cheap Hong Kong B-list kung fu movie.

RATING: 5