Verdict
Summary
Some of the stuff we see is pretty cool though, and fans of the new wave of Hong Kong martial arts films from the early ’90s should appreciate this more than most. 88 Films recently released a fully loaded Blu-ray edition of Operation Scorpio, and the new 2K remaster gives the film a whole new sheen and shine. Packed with bonus features, including a poster, a thick essay booklet (three lengthy essays!), and much more, this is a keeper for fans of the genre.
Plot:
A daydreamer saves a woman from slavery in the 1920s and learns martial arts from a group of bodybuilders and cooks.
Review:
A daydreaming university student named Yu Shu (Chin Ka-Lok) draws comic strips while attending school in the 1920s, and he’s mercilessly bullied because of it. He’s actually quite good at the art and the plots of his heroic cartoons, and when he’s walking home one day after school, he saves the life of a young woman named Mei who is about to be trafficked by some gangsters. He is cast out of his home for being with a disreputable woman, and the two of them find refuge in a sort of halfway house run by a bunch of bodybuilders and an old chef who happens to be a kung fu dynamo. While there, Mei attends to chores, while Yu takes lessons in fighting styles and in cooking, and pretty soon he’s great at both. Meanwhile, the gangsters comb the area for Mei, with whom they have a binding “contract,” and they send their best thugs, including a slippery villain known as the Scorpion King (played by Won Jin) who has never been beaten in a fight, and when they come calling on the halfway house, he defeats all the bodybuilders and the kung fu master … but when he fights Yu, he comes across a style of fighting he’s never seen before: Eel style!
A stylish and wacky little kung fu movie that takes its sweet time to get good, Operation Scorpio is one of those “ripped from the pages of a comic book” types of action films where the nebbish hero becomes a real hero modeled after his own drawings. As such, it’s adequate, and it also seems to mark the transition period in Hong Kong films where wires were beginning to be used to assist in the choreography. It’s very present here, but it works, although the fight choreography is obviously cheated quite a bit with ultra close ups and wild angles. Some of the stuff we see is pretty cool though, and fans of the new wave of Hong Kong martial arts films from the early ’90s should appreciate this more than most. From director David Lai.
88 Films recently released a fully loaded Blu-ray edition of Operation Scorpio, and the new 2K remaster gives the film a whole new sheen and shine. Packed with bonus features, including a poster, a thick essay booklet (three lengthy essays!), and much more, this is a keeper for fans of the genre.
Bonus Materials
- O-RING SLIP CASE WITH NEW ARTWORK BY KUNG FU BOB
- 2K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL NEGATIVE
- REMASTERED ORIGINAL CANTONESE MONOAURAL SOUNDTRACK
- REMASTERED ENGLISH DUB MONOAURAL SOUNDTRACK
- NEWLY TRANSLATED ENGLISH SUBTITLES
- Audio commentary by Expert Paul Bramhall
- Scorpion In Seoul – In Conversation With Won Jin
- Scene specific audio commentary by Won Jin
- Exclusive to 88 Films – A Sneak Peek at Jump Senior (2024) Directed, Produced, Written, Choreographed, and Starring Won Jin
- Won Jin Audition Reel
- A Conversation with “Scorpion King” Star Chin Kar Lok
- A Conversation with “Scorpion King” Star Won Jin
- Lau Kar Leung Interview
- English Opening and Closing Credits
- Cantonese Trailer
- English Trailer
- Image Gallery
- Reversible Sleeve