The under­sung tal­ents of Yeun Biao – Hong Kong action star

Watch­ing as the actor and mar­tial artist com­pletes his fifth or sixth con­sec­u­tive stand­ing back­flip over a skip­ping rope dur­ing a comedic train­ing set-piece, it might occur to many that the name Yuen Biao should be one more syn­ony­mous with the Hong Kong action com­e­dy, with all its Olympian feats of ath­leti­cism. His name is per­haps best known in the west as part of a set, fea­tur­ing along­side one or both of the ​“Three Drag­ons”, his child­hood friends and ​“big broth­ers” Sam­mo Hung and Jack­ie Chan, all of whom came up through the Peking Opera School along­side peo­ple who would become fre­quent and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tors such as direc­tor Corey Yuen. 

Despite his con­sid­er­able tal­ents, Biao can some­times get lost in the shuf­fle in con­ver­sa­tions about the films of the Hong Kong mar­tial arts scene – from a gen­er­al West­ern per­spec­tive at least – espe­cial­ly when com­pared with his Peking Opera con­tem­po­raries. But Biao’s style of per­for­mance is both syn­er­getic with and dis­tinct from that of Hung and Jack­ie Chan: the same expert comedic tim­ing and will­ing­ness to look like a fool, com­bined with speed and flex­i­bil­i­ty, along with a tal­ent for daz­zling acro­bat­ics that stands apart from both. You can see it in his work with his Peking Opera broth­ers in the ​‘Lucky Stars’ tril­o­gy begin­ning with Win­ners and Sin­ners, or Drag­ons For­ev­er, the three’s final film all together.

Thank­ful­ly new Eure­ka Video restora­tions of Sam­mo Hung’s Knock­about and Yeun Woo-Ping’s Dread­naught see Biao take cen­tre stage. Knock­about is an ear­ly career high­light for the actor, who up to that point had pri­mar­i­ly worked as a stunt­man and extra, dou­bling for the likes of Bruce Lee. The film pushed him from co-star to a full-on lead, and with a title lit­er­al­ly mean­ing ​‘slap­stick com­e­dy’, Biao’s first star­ring role embod­ies this in the fullest, play­ing a mis­chie­vous con artist trans­formed into a for­mi­da­ble fighter.

He starts as a dou­ble act with Liang Chia-jen, play­ing his broth­er and part­ner in crime, demon­strat­ing infec­tious­ly goofy onscreen chem­istry. Togeth­er, even the film’s stu­pid­est broth­er­ly spats bring with them a nim­ble ath­leti­cism. It’s delight­ful to see Yuen car­ry­ing such scenes with both his phys­i­cal­i­ty and easy­go­ing com­ic tim­ing and effort­less aura of con­fi­dence. Though it begins as a two-han­der, the screen is slow­ly ced­ed to Yuen as the sto­ry pro­gress­es and becomes a show­case for his acro­bat­ic abil­i­ty. The final 20-minute fight in par­tic­u­lar is as a spec­tac­u­lar show­case of chore­og­ra­phy and the per­form­ers’ breath­tak­ing phys­i­cal abil­i­ty as it is wil­ful­ly, glo­ri­ous­ly stu­pid. Biao’s char­ac­ter embraces the ​“mon­key style”, alter­nat­ing leaps and kicks as well as skit­ter­ing around and snarling, before his and Sam­mo Hung’s char­ac­ter recall a dead­lier ver­sion of jump rope training.

In Yuen Woo-ping’s action-com­e­dy-hor­ror Dread­naught, Yuen plays an incred­i­bly dif­fer­ent pro­tag­o­nist, to the point where it feels dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to that debut star­ring role. Ini­tial­ly decen­tralised from the var­i­ous antag­o­nis­tic rela­tion­ships of the film’s com­mu­ni­ty, he plays hap­less and clum­sy out­sider Mousy, who even­tu­al­ly becomes the film’s under­dog hero. A com­mon­ly-cit­ed aspect of Hong Kong action heroes is a will­ing­ness to let them­selves get hit and even humil­i­at­ed, but even with that in mind there’s a unique­ness to the cow­ardice shown by Mousy. He comed­ical­ly floun­ders his way through the major­i­ty of the film. Instead of a con­fi­dent, pos­tur­ing grifter here he’s a pushover, in what feels like a direct rebut­tal to that first star­ring role.

Dread­naught is already unique among the Yeun Biao canon for its focus on patient­ly-paced slash­er hor­ror over action set-pieces, but its real strength its the deft deploy­ment of Yuen’s tal­ents. Still ear­ly in his career, Biao was craft­ing an onscreen per­sona, but Dread­naught already feels like an unex­pect­ed sub­ver­sion of his ath­let­ic tal­ents – by hav­ing him play a cow­ard. After being front and cen­tre in Knock­about, Biao begins Dread­naught film at the side­lines, chan­nel­ing sweet­ness and almost every­man charm that makes him so endear­ing in a lot of his lat­er work too. He’s more of an inno­cent and well-mean­ing goof from the jump in Woo-ping’s film, a lit­tle more in line with the gen­tler kinds of roles he would play along­side Jack­ie and Sam­mo in movies such as Wheels on Meals – hap­less rather than cun­ning, but charm­ing all the same. It’s a per­fect fit for Dread­naught, a con­trast to the bru­tal­i­ty of what in places feels like a mar­tial arts slash­er film as the ​“White Tiger” becomes a local ser­i­al killer.

It’s a tricky tightrope to show off this con­stant phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and remain a con­vinc­ing action lead but Biao man­ages it like few oth­ers could, con­vinc­ing in his ath­let­ic abil­i­ty with­out com­pro­mis­ing his char­ac­ter. His vic­to­ry comes not through vig­or­ous train­ing or trans­for­ma­tion as in Knock­about, but through an appli­ca­tion of some­thing his char­ac­ter already knew – his ​“laun­dry kung fu”. His lat­er work shows off a range of types, hav­ing played a stern but cool author­i­ta­tive type as often as sweet-natured com­ic relief char­ac­ters, but the con­trast between his lead­ing roles in these two films shows that every­thing that his con­tem­po­raries can do, he can do as well – and throw a few extra som­er­saults in for good measure.

Knock­about and Dread­naught are avail­able through Eure­ka Video.