These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World, by Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali. Revised and expanded paperback edition, Running Press, 2025, 384 pages, $40.00.
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Classic kung fu films can be ridiculous affairs, full of stock sound effects, dizzying camera zooms, stunt performers who are a foot taller than the actors being doubled, and displays of gore that are not so much unconvincing as medically impossible. Though Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali have a lot of fun with this ridiculousness in These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World – such as by creating a 24-page directory of Bruce Lee imitators like Bruce Le and Bruce Li, the latter of whom was a dead ringer for Lee “only when viewed from the right side” (128) – they don’t let it overshadow a movie’s political or social value. The first kung fu movie discussed at length is the cartoonishly violent One-Armed Swordsman (1967), which was released in Hong Kong at the peak of a multi-month conflict between protestors and police officers that resulted in over a thousand bombings and dozens of deaths. “People were angry,” the authors explain. “They wanted blood. [Director] Chang Cheh delivered plenty of it” (23).
The book’s scope is vast, extending beyond on-screen content to include the productions of various movies as well as merchandise, novelizations, martial arts schools, and the specific theaters that screened the films. Roughly the first 10% covers the history of martial arts in America, decades before real kung fu movies were made. Which is to say that the authors provide a thorough history of kung fu cinema that analyzes each film in multiple contexts at once. Seeing through the violence of The One-Armed Swordsman, they find that Chang’s films ultimately “were about hing dai, a Chinese term meaning brotherhood,” and that the films’ true power was their depiction of characters who “would kill for each other, die for each other, seek revenge for each other, and stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of overwhelming odds together” (23). Hendrix and Poggiali write as critics and historians, but moments like this one show they’re fans, too, who want to make a case for the genre.
A large percentage of the book focuses on the films’ distribution and reception in America, where kung fu became popular in cities that underwent similar periods of unrest – New York alone saw violence around anti-war and racial demonstrations, Stonewall, the Lincoln Hospital takeover, and the 1977 blackout within a 10-year span. The authors argue that while cheap tickets and double-feature billings initially attracted audiences, kung fu films endured in America for the same reasons they did in Hong Kong: “These movies sang a revolutionary song: young people, kept down by the older generation, finally fought back against corruption. They spoke to young, marginalized kids who felt left behind, exploited, and rippled off” (42). Their argument is convincing, supported by newspaper clippings and statements from politicians, crime statistics, and contemporaneous reviews. And the book goes on to illustrate how America’s changing taste in kung fu revealed the nation’s changing temperament, just as The One-Armed Swordsman matched Hong Kong’s mood. It’s no coincidence that the diverse martial arts heroes of the 1970s were succeeded by blond, bland Chuck Norris at the same time that Reagan became president.
The material may sound stiffly academic, but the truth is that the book is entertaining and often very funny. At times, the authors are dryly sarcastic – “The one sheet for Duel of the Iron Fist bragged about its endorsement by Chang Ming Lee, ‘China’s Grand Master of Kung Fu,’” they point out, “which would be amazing if Chang actually existed” (49). In other moments, they channel the gleefulness of a child who’s telling his friends on the playground about the R-rated movie he watched last night. Their previously mentioned coverage of Bruceploitation, a subgenre of at least 80 movies produced to cash in on Bruce Lee’s death, uses both voices to make sense of the phenomenon’s madness. After chronicling several entries, they crown The Dragon Lives Again (1977) as “the one Bruceploitation movie to rule them all” (114), and it’s hard to disagree with that title after reading their synopsis:
[The film] follows Bruce to Hell, where the King of the Underworld tells him he can escape back to Earth but only if he fights an army of copyright-infringing characters: Dracula! Clint Eastwood! James Bond! The Godfather! And Japan’s blind swordsman, Zatoichi! There are also armies of skeletons. (114)
In this case as well as several others, reading their assessment is more fun than watching the actual movie.
Humor also animates the behind-the-scenes tales, many of which are equally bonkers. The authors profile the unlikely production team of Larry Joachim and his son, Marco, who’s 10 years old in their first appearance and the real brains of the operation; the Joachims’ foray into kung fu begins when Marco convinces his dad to buy the rights to The Green Hornet and re-edit a few episodes into a feature-length film, a $15,000 project that grossed $120,000 from two theaters in three weeks. Reportedly, the only instruction director/producer/writer/ninjaphile extraordinaire Godfrey Ho gave his actors was “I can’t see your acting – more acting!” (309). More than once are filmmakers involved with hired killers and real-life gangsters.
Importantly, Hendrix and Poggiali understand the difference between good-natured fun and condescension. Their appreciation of kung fu is not ironic. Like any good critics, they judge each film on its own terms and try to get the most out of it, whether it offers goofiness or social commentary or both at the same time. And the authors display a sincere respect for the filmmakers, even when stars’ egos make easy targets. Though they don’t mince words when assessing Sho Kosugi’s movies, they have nothing but admiration for Kosugi himself, who moved to America with little more than $500 and suffered burns and dislocated bones for his art. Nor do the authors ignore the fact that a fun movie can also be objectionable – they address the inherent ghastliness of Bruceploitation head-on. They’re particularly critical of Bruce Lee, the Man and the Legend (1973), which featured footage of Lee’s funerals with “close-ups of Lee’s traumatized children, five-year-old Shannon and nine-year-old Brandon who constantly turned his back on the camera” (96). They describe the movie as a “shocking betrayal. Golden Harvest claimed to be Lee’s home. Raymond Chow claimed to be his business partner. But once Lee died, all bets were off” (97).
The book’s only significant drawback is that it ends too soon. After taking nearly 300 pages to cover the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, the remaining 60 only have room for the absolute biggest hits of the late 1980s, like Bloodsport (1988), which is really kung-fu-adjacent. The 1990s coverage is even briefer: a single page covers Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993), Rumble in the Bronx (1995), Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997), Sammo Hung’s American TV series Martial Law (1998-2000), and Yuen Woo-ping’s choreography on The Matrix (1999), each of which would have warranted individual sections if they’d been released in 1975. The authors reference the closure of several NYC theaters to indicate the end of an era, but they leave the impression that kung fu was stronger and more interesting than it had been in the preceding decade. The narrative feels truncated.
Michelle Yeoh ended a five-year hiatus from acting by costarring in Police Story 3: Supercop (1992) with Jackie Chan.
To a degree, this problem is inevitable when writing about a genre with literally thousands of movies. The authors admit as much in their final page, where they lament all the crazy films that couldn’t be included and encourage the reader to seek those out. All the same, this fizzled-out conclusion is disappointing for a book that, for most of its length, seemed like the be-all and end-all authority on kung fu cinema, at least from America’s perspective. But even this fault doesn’t take away from the nearly 400 pages of great material; the real disappointment is that the post-1985 films weren’t saved for a second volume.
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All images are screenshots from the films discussed.
