User Reviews

WW2 set story of a Japanese plane shot down with secret plans for the invasion of Shanghai inside. The Chinese have taken the plans and are racing to get the plans into their military hands while the Japanese try to stop them.

In films from the 1970's and early 1980's there seems to be only a limited number of martial arts plots, with most of the traditional set stories being either about conflicting schools or about taking revenge for some wrong. Anything that is set in any other time tends to be set during the Japanese occupation of World War 2 with the repressed Chinese taking on the evil Japanese. All of the WW2 films tend to look exactly the same or if not seem to be part of one long feature film of about 500 hours that was cut up. This film doesn't really seem to fit into that mold and quite honestly stand apart from the rest of the similarly set films. The plot isn't by the book and the action seems to be a little bit more clever. Watching the film I was pleasantly surprised by what I was seeing and actually decided to keep the bargain DVD since its good enough for a repeat viewing.

Recommended.

I saw this under the title KUNG FU SUPERMAN although the re-titling BRUCE, D-DAY AT MACAU is by far the best title this movie has. It's a stock kung fu basher featuring a leading role for Bruce Leung (KUNG FU HUSTLE). He plays a Chinese patriot tasked with keeping an important document safe from the invading Japanese. Said Japanese are present in military force in the film's first ten minutes but for the rest of the running time the film just plays out in the usual rural locations with the characters wearing the usual clothing.

A lot of the running time is made up of comedy involving Leung's amusing gang members. Chief of these is the kid Monkey, played with youthful relish by Hoi Mang, who you may remember from his comedic supporting turns in many Jackie Chan movies of the 1980s. It's a delight to see him as a kid here and he's certainly the liveliest and most interesting thing about the movie. The rest is a mash of unimportant fight scenes and various characters getting chased and captured.

Leung does his stuff but his thunder is stolen by the other cast members, particularly the acrobatic chaps who help him to tackle the main villain at the climax. Said final fight scene is quite electrifying and staged in the grounds of a Portuguese manor house in Macau, so it looks very nice. It's a fairly vicious piece of action too. Despite what the IMDb claims, Sammo Hung is not in this movie, so don't waste your time looking for him.