These 13 Martial Arts Films Belong in Your Library

The Five Foot Geekshelf Begins

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Welcome to the first entry in the Five-Foot Geekshelf series of articles where I will be discussing 13 Martial Arts Films that every geek should be familiar with in order to be conversant in the genre. This is not a “best of” list of films, rather it is a list of films that provide a good foundation for further exploration of the genre. Each film was selected to highlight a particular stage of development in the Martial Arts film genre that should lead a viewer to deeper and more meaningful exploration.

I was inspired to do a series of Geekshelf articles when I recently came across a short two article series that ran in the May/June and July/August issues of Twilight Zone Magazine in 1983. The articles were titled The Fantasy Five-Foot Shelf after the famous nickname for the Harvard Classics series created by Charles William Eliot when he retired as President of Harvard University. The collection of 50 books, which took up approximately Five Feet of shelf space, contained everything that Eliot believed was necessary for a person to read in order to have a “liberal arts” education. Given that one of Eliot’s main efforts as Harvard President was to minimize the status of liberal arts and transform the university experience from a liberal education to a practical scientific research education, you can imagine that Dr. Eliot had some significant holes in the series.

It must be acknowledge that any list, not matter how long, will always have holes within it that anyone with a level of familiarity will notice with minimal effort. Because of this, I am willing to forgive Dr. Eliot for leaving out The Republic of Plato, even if his leaving it out meant that Karl Popper’s analysis became the common opinion of the dialogue for generations. Anyone who has actually read The Republic begins to doubt that Dr. Popper read more than a couple of undergrad papers on the book. I have a great deal of respect for Popper in general, but his interpretation of The Republic leaves a lot to be desired. Similarly, readers might have missed out on what Charles Beard was doing in his own Republic, which was a sequel to his An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. Beard’s Republic is a criticism of his prior work and of how it tainted discussions of the Constitution that assumes a familiarity with Plato’s work.

That’s just my fancy way of saying that my list will have holes in it and that’s where you the discussant come in. I want you to contribute martial arts films that you think are central to a core foundation of understanding the genre. I’m picking my 13 movies, but you might have your own and I’d love to read them.

According to film critic and historian David Bordwell, Hong Kong films did not have widespread distribution outside of East Asia until the 1970s with the influx of martial arts (Kung Fu) films into Western theatres. Though hard core cineastes were already familiar with the work of King Hu, films like Come Drink with Me (1966) and Dragon Inn (1967) did not have large mainstream audiences. It was the more “grounded” kung fu movies that captured the mass market and these films, and their descendants, are what I will be discussing on this Geekshelf.

There are two simple rules for the Martial Arts Film Geekshelf:

1. The films must not be Wuxia (武俠) films because that genre is getting it’s own list.

2. The action of these films must focus primarily on the use of hand to hand combat to solve problems/save the day. There can be some gun play, but it has to be secondary to the way of the fist.

The first rule excludes the work of King Hu, who’s excellent films are pinnacles of the Wuxia genre which contains more fantasy elements than your average martial arts film. This isn’t to say that martial arts films won’t have fantastic/mystical elements, just that they will pale in comparison to the flying energy blast projectors of a film like Hark Tsui’s 1983 extravaganza Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. These rules do allow for a wide variety fo films and my list extends outside of Hong Kong and into the greater filmic action film conversation, so here are thirteen martial arts films that I think every geek should be familiar with as a foundation for more conversation.

1. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (aka Master Killer)

The Shaw Brothers studio is one of the most important production studios when it comes to martial arts films. Though they did not invent the genre, they did solidify a particular style that was more realistic than Wuxia films of the past and that managed to incorporate and combine real martial arts techniques with wild fantastic abilities. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin/Master Killer (1977) isn’t the first martial arts film produced by the studio, but it is a wellspring of inspiration for so many films that followed and a central film in the Shaolin subgenre of martial arts film.

Not only does it help to codify the myth of the Shaolin as masters of the martial arts in film, it combines that with strong elements of Chinese national pride and the power of the individual to change the world. Other key films in the Shaolin genre include Jet Li’s Shaolin Temple (1982), Shaolin (2011), and The Shaolin Plot (1977).

2. 5 Deadly Venoms (1978)

While some might say it’s cheating to include two Shaw Brothers films so early in the list, 5 Deadly Venoms is such a key mystic martial arts film that to leave it out would be more than leaving a mere hole it would be a sin against the genre. Where The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is historical fiction, 5 Deadly Venoms is a wonderful example of fantasy martial arts where the styles have mystic capabilities beyond those of the normal martial artist. The fantasy martial arts genre contains mysticism and impossible abilities, but refrains from the flying and depressing narratives of a typical Wuxia tale. These are the Sword & Sorcery subgenre of martial arts films where the good guys (or the anti-heroes) fight against secret societies to attain justice or wealth.

This particular film begins with the Master of the Poison Clan training a student in the skills necessary to assassinate his five former students. He does not know whether they are using their techniques for good or for evil and if they walk the path of evil then the young student must destroy them. The movie is directed by Hong Kong legend Cheh Chang and Meng Lo steals the show as Toad. It’s an exciting film and while the martials arts is more stilted than modern audiences are used to, it never fails to entertain me. There is an entire genre of Venoms films, but this was selected because of the focus on “realistic” mystic martial arts. Other films in the mystic marial arts genre include The Kid with the Golden Arm (1979) and Fists of the White Lotus (1980). Though Master of the Flying Gullotine (1976) predates the film, and focuses on the eponymous weapon, it is also worth checking out.

3. Enter the Dragon (1973)

Enter the Dragon is one of the most important martial arts films ever created. Not only does it feature Bruce Lee at the top of his form, the film is filled with a number of excellent martial artists (Jim Keely, Robert Wall) and future/current at the time Hong Kong stars (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Su Lin and Bolo Yeung). It also features a very Hollywood storyline that would have made a good sequel to the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967).

In the Bond film, Bond trains in the martial arts in order to infiltrate a SPECTRE operation and prevent them from causing a nuclear war. The film ends with Bond and a band of Ninjas attacking Blofeld’s operation. In the Bruce Lee picture, Lee is a martial arts instructor who is recruited to infiltrate the island fortress of an evil mastermind named Han who is building a “Fighting Force of Exceptional Magnitude” with which he plans to expand his drug empire and engage in political assassinations. Han, the film’s villain, is a mix of Doctor No and Blofeld and Shek Wing-cheung chews up the scenery with deft skill. He is one of the all time great villains.

I could have selected one of Bruce Lee’s many excellent martial arts films. The Chinese Connection (1972) aka Fist of Fury is the prototypical nationalist “pro-Chinese Hand” film in which a Chinese martial artist defeats Japanese colonialism, or at least resists it. Interestingly, Bruce Lee’s character Chen Zhen is a member of the Jing Wu school of kung fu (the film’s title literally means Chin Woo Tradition) and Shek Wing-cheung was a real life member of that organization. Fists of Fury (1972) aka The Big Boss, not to be confused with Fist of Fury above, is a great anti-hero against corrupt drug lords movie and could easily have been selected for the list.

But Enter the Dragon stands apart from these because it marks the fusion of Hollywood and Hong Kong. It wasn’t the first time that Western film makers partnered with Hong Kong production companies, but it helped to launch the martial arts film craze and was pivotal in not only introducing Chinese films to American audiences, but the creation of American martial arts films as well.

4. Good Guys Wear Black (1978)

Before the 2002 release of Doug Liman’s of The Bourne Identity, Chuck Norris’s espionage martial arts film Good Guys Wear Black was the closest thing audiences had to an accurate adaptation of Ludlum’s classic spy novel. No, Good Guys Wear Black isn’t a ripoff of Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity, but it shares a lot of thematic elements. It is those thematic elements that elevate this film over a lot of earlier Chuck Norris films. A Force of One (1979) has a more plausible storyline, and fighters more able to spar with Norris, but the plot there is a bit prosaic. The Octagon (1980), which is one of my favorite Chuck Norris films, might have provided the foundation for films like American Ninja and the animated GI Joe’s origin for Snake Eyes but it shares too much with Enter the Dragon to claim a spot here.

As much as I like Chuck’s “Cop and Ranger” films, Code of Silence and Hero and the Terror are real standouts, it is Good Guys Wear Black where Chuck Norris really broke through with American audiences and became a star. I know, I know, Breaker! Breaker! was his breakout role, but let’s save that one for the “Hero Fights Corrupt Sheriff” Shelf. In Good Guys Wear Black, Chuck Norris plays Dr. (and Major) John T. Booker, a Professor of Political Science at UC Riverside. The synopses say UCLA, but the campus and his time driving race cars on the Riverside International Raceway, are UC Riverside. Trust me, it’s where I went to school and that’s another reason I chose it. Before Booker was a professor, he was a special operative during the Vietnam War and US Senator Conrad Morgan wants to cover up a shady deal he made with North Vietnam during the Paris negotiations.

It’s an espionage film straight out of Ludlum and Chuck Norris beats the bejeezus out of all the stunt men. It’s amazing to watch them attempt to react to his speed and skill and it is clear that Hollywood stunt people were at a point of adaptation. The choreography isn’t quite there yet, but that adds to the charm. It makes Booker’s skill look all the more impressive. The film is as politically cynical as any film in the 1970s and stars Academy Award Nominee Anne Archer as a journalist who complicates Booker’s life and is also his romantic interest. This film was an early example of how American martial arts films could be about more than just fighting. Hong Kong films have always been about more than fighting, but American ones often fall into the “it’s a tournament” trap.

5. Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon (1985)

Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon is a remarkable film in many ways. It is an excellent martial arts film that is a love letter to the Harlem audiences who helped make importing martial arts films into America profitable. It is a critique of MTV and the pop music of the mid-80s that contrasts Motown artist Vanity with a pseudo-Cindy Lauper. It is a blaxploitation film that is subversive in a subtle way because it touches on a lot of the frustrations in other blaxploitation films, but from a different angle. It’s not Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song or anything, it’s PG-13 after all, but it is interesting in its own way. If you watch this and Do the Right Thing back to back, I guarantee you’ll see some similarities. It’s also one helluva martial arts film. Julius Carry plays Sho’Nuff, the Shogun of Harlem, in a plot that mirrors Fist of Fury/The Chinese Connection.

The film might fall a bit into camp from time to time, but it the choreography is quite good for the time and as stilted as Taimak is in delivering the dialogue that is more than made up for by Julius Carry’s performance. Sho’Nuff is one of the all time great martial arts villains and Carry, whose career included The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. and Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, was a hardworking and charismatic actor who died far too young.

6. Enter the Ninja (1981)/Revenge of the Ninja (1983)

I am cheating here by listing two films, but one could make a list just dedicated to films inspired by Sho Kosugi’s Ninja films. While The Octagon predates Enter the Ninja, I think it would be fair to say that Enter the Ninja was the cornerstone picture in the Ninja obsessed 1980s. Golden Globe Nominee, and second best Lancelot ever, Franco Nero is wonderfully miscast as Cole, a young American mercenary who is trained in the art of ninjutsu…as you do.

Let’s not kid here though. Cole might be the protagonist of the movie, but Enter the Ninja is the Sho Kosugi show and Golan and Globus were smart enough to recognize this fact when they handed Sho the lead in Revenge of the Ninja. This is the franchise that gave us the mantra “Only a Ninja can kill a Ninja” and while the stories are relatively straight forward Sho’s charisma and the shear cool factor of Ninjas solidifies these as quintessential viewing. Whenever you watch a more recent Ninja film, whether it’s the 2009 Scott Adkins vehicle Ninja or the 2009 splatterfest that is Ninja Assassin, you will see echoes of these two films. Sho Kosugi’s Ninja films followed traditional martial arts narratives, but they also took time to isolate the effects of weapons in a kid of light weight horror manner. These are films where you see Shuriken embedded into faces.

7. Wheels on Meals (1984)

Jackie Chan’s earliest films were pseudo-Bruce Lee affairs that are largely forgettable. That all changed when his films began to combine his tremendous physical skill with his strong sense of comedic timing. New Fist of Fury is fun but really only worth watching if you want to do a deep dive into Bruce Li/Ly/Le copycat films. Films like Snake in Eagle’s Shadow (1978), Drunken Master (1978), and Half a Loaf of Kung Fu (1978) are where Jackie Chan truly began to shine as a performer. Drunken Master features an excellent story and martial arts and its sequel Drunken Master II (1994) is mindblowingly good and demonstrates peak Hong Kong New Wave film making. If you only watch one Jackie Chan movie, you should probably watch Drunken Master II, but everyone says that and everyone has seen it. My Jackie Chan choice needed to highlight a shift in the industry.

I almost chose Half a Loaf of Kung Fu as the essential film for this list, because it is an often overlooked martial arts comedy, but in the end I had to go with Wheels on Meals. It features what may be one of the most hilarious mistranslations of a title ever, it should be Meals on Wheels, but it also features one of the best fight scenes ever filmed in any production. The fight between Jackie Chan and Benny “The Jet” Urquidez is fast and furious and Wheels on Meals is one of the films that changed the game regarding the level of technique, speed, and skill later viewers would demand in their films. Early Shaw Brothers films might feature real techniques (sometimes), but they are in slow motion and rigidly adhere to forms. What Jackie and Benny create here is magic. This is the fight that inspired the fight between John Cusack and Benny in Grosse Pointe Blank which may not be as fast, but highlights Benny’s skill as a martial artist and choreographer.

8. Bodyguard from Beijing (1994)

It wasn’t easy to choose a pivotal Jet Li film. He’s been in so many fantastic martial arts films ranging from Once Upon a Time in China where he plays Wong Fei-Hung, the same character Jackie Chan plays in his Drunken Master movies. Those would likely be the “critics” picks and are on the list of films you are supposed to like. I mean, yes, you should like them, but they are on everyone’s list. Then there was the temptation to pick Fist of Legend (1994) which tells the story of a familiar character (Chen Zhen of The Chinese Connection), but that’s the Tarantino pick. When he was doing his big push to introduce people to action cinema, that was the Jet Li film he picked.

I picked Bodyguard from Beijing for a couple of reasons. The first is because it is a great demonstration of how Hong Kong reimagines/transforms American films. It’s essentially a remake of the 1992 Kevin Costner film The Bodyguard, but processed through the Hong Kong Action Blender. The second reason is this film highlights something that has been an issue for most of Jet Li’s career and that’s the fact that his films often drift into the goofy. This is in contrast to Jackie Chan’s Buster Keaton influenced comedic bits and is more along the lines of Jerry Lewis levels of over the top. The Bodyguard from Beijing is nowhere near the level of silliness that Kung Fu Kult Master (a Wuxia film and so not in contention) displays, but it’s far from entirely serious. There are just some moments that make you go “huh?” Given how charming Jet Li’s personality is, and his IMMENSE skill as a martial artist, I think this combination has prevented him from being as big a star as he could have been. He’s been very successful, and deservedly so, but he could have been even bigger if he didn’t have a silly streak.

To give an extreme example, and The Bodyguard from Beijing is not even in the same ballpark as this one, you can watch the 1993 Wong Jing production Last Hero in China where Jet Li once again plays Wong Fei-Hung, but this time for laughs.

Even for the silly moments though The Bodyguard from Beijing is a blast and the final fight in the kitchen where there is gas in the air, which requires them to fight instead of shoot, is well worth the price of admission.

9. Timecop (1994)

Jean Claude Van Damme is one of America’s biggest martial arts stars and he has starred in some excellent movies (Bloodsport and JCVD) and some less than excellent movies (Cyborg and Street Fighter). With the exception of JCVD, most of these films haven’t required him to stretch his acting chops at all because the narratives are very straightforward martial arts revenge or tournament based stories. Given that Van Damme’s films mark a heyday in American martial arts films that proved that Hollywood could find a successor to Chuck Norris that would appeal to a new generation of viewers, I knew I had to include one of his films in the mix.

Add to that the fact that Van Damme’s work includes collaborations with Hong Kong directors or remakes of Hong Kong films (he remade a Jackie Chan classic), Van Damme’s catalog is the mirror image of what I was going for with my Jet Li pick. The Bodyguard from Beijing shows how Hong Kong re-envisions American productions and Van Damme’s films show how Hong Kong productions have influenced Hollywood film making. In my opinion, Timecop is not only one of Van Damme’s best films, it is also one of the better time travel films. It has a cast it doesn’t deserve, bizarre 1990s interpretations of future fashion (if only we knew that all future fashion would essentially be 90s casual), and features Van Damme beating the snot out of a bunch of baddies. I wish that Hollywood had learned the lesson that Timecop teaches, that you can throw martial arts into any narrative you want to, earlier than it did. We might not have had that brief dead period in the late 00s and early 10s where good US martial arts films were few and far between. That changed, but there were a couple years there where they were dead.

10. Ip Man (2010)

What if you changed Chen Zhen’s name to Ip Man, the man who taught Bruce Lee Kung Fu, and made a film that was tremendously nationalistic and dialed the martial arts skill level up to 11? What you would have is Donnie Yen’s Ip Man, an absolute must watch for any film fan. Donnie Yen has a deep catalog of excellent martial arts films that include Iron Monkey, Legend of the Fist, Once Upon a China II, and the groundbreaking films Kill Zone and Flash Point which inserted mixed martial arts into the choreography to brutal effect.

Donnie Yen has also had some success in the American film market, with roles in Blade II and Shanghai Knights, but his bread and butter has been pushing the boundaries of what can physically be done in a martial arts film. He has helped to transform the choreography into breathtaking displays of speed and skill. With Ip Man, Yen combines a compelling narrative (a Chinese teacher resisting Japanese colonialism) with solemn acting and some really beautiful choreography. While this plot is very similar to The Chinese Connection and Fist of Legend, it is such a strong entry that I chose it over Flash Point as the film for this list though that final fight in Flash Point really is something special.

11. The Man from Nowhere (2010)

The Man from Nowhere was one of my recent Weekly Geekly film picks, but it definitely deserves mention here. While Oldboy (2003) set the standard for brutal action for many American action fans, the 2010 Lee Jeong-beom production The Man from Nowhere combines brutal fast paced action with a sense of loneliness and sorrow that allows for redemption and I find it to be a far superior film. The knife fight between Won Bin and Thanayong Wongtrakul is one of the best martial arts sequences ever filmed. Won Bin plays Cha Tae-sik, a man with a tortured past who just wants to disappear into the shadows and wither away. He is a veteran who’s service to country led to the death of his family. In his mind, the world would be better without him, but then he meets a young girl named So-mi. So-mi’s life is nothing but misery. There is one moment, one of the saddest moments I’ve ever seen in film, when So-mi tells him how she feels in a scene before she is kidnapped. She tells him that as miserable as her life is, that Tae-sik has hurt her more than anything she ever felt but that even that pain won’t make her hate him.

Mister? I embarrass you too, right? That's why you ignored me? It's okay. My teacher and all the kids do that too. Mom said that if I get lost, I should forget our address and phone number. She gets drunk and says we should die. Even though that pig called me a bum... you're meaner. But I don't hate you. Because if I do, I won't have anyone I like. Thinking about it hurts me here. So I won't hate you.

It’s a heart wrenching moment, but it’s a moment that explains why he feels motivated to murder each and every person he kills in the movie. This is Taken if Liam Neeson’s character was an angry god of death. Tae-sik is an unstoppable force and nothing will stop him from saving So-mi when the Drug Lord kidnaps her. When he believes the drug lord has killed her and taken her eyes, the rage on display is fully righteous.

12. The Night Comes for Us (2018)

Iko Uwais, rightly, became a star when a larger audience came into contact with the 2011 film The Raid: Redemption, but we were all introduced to two other equally awesome things with that film. The first is the Indonesian action film, which combined slasher film level brutality with eye-popping stunts and choreography. Uwais was amazing in that film, but there was secondary character I found equally compelling and that was Joe Taslim’s character Jaka. He wasn’t the protagonist, so he didn’t get as much screentime, but he drew your attention every time you saw him on the screen.

In 2018’s The Night Comes for Us, it is Taslim who plays the lead character and Uwais who plays a rival/antagonistic character. The Night Comes for Us is ostensibly a gang film that shares a narrative element with The Man from Nowhere, but it is also one of the most brutal martial arts films I have ever seen. I was literally tired after watching it the first time. That’s not an exaggeration. The film kept my adrenalin at such a high level throughout that when the credits rolled, I was exhausted. It is one of the most violent and brutal films I’ve ever seen and it pushes the limits of camera and crew in some remarkable ways.

13. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled-In (2024)

Did you think Hong Kong was going to stop innovating when it came to martial arts films? Me either. The proof of that is with 2024’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In. This is a hyperviolent and hyperstylized martial arts film that takes place in Kowloon Walled City. The only way I can describe Kowloon is as a kind of Libertarian netherworld between British Hong Kong and Mainland China where anything is possible and where people live stacked upon one another in unimaginable ways. It’s an interesting place to read about and Twilight of the Warriors takes place in that almost mythical location. The movie is based on the Novel City of Darkness and takes place in 1980s Hong Kong where a young refugee settles in the walled city only to get stuck in the middle of a conflict between the forces of safety and stability and the criminal underworld. When there is no law, someone has to become the law and it’s only through violence that justice can be done.