The film's Power Trio (L-R: Sergeant Lam, Mad Wei and "Playboy" Lung) posing for a Back-To-Back-to-Back Badasses shot
Hong Kong Godfather is a 1985 action movie produced by Shaw Brothers studios, starring Leung Kar-Yan and Norman Chu. Directed by Johnny Wang, the film is a Genre Throwback to old-school Chang Cheh martial arts films, combined with elements that wouldn't feel out-of-place for later directors like John Woo.
Mad Wei (Leung) used to be a top enforcer of a triad syndicate, but has since retired after having his daughter. "Playboy" Lung (Chu) is a gangster and Wei's close friend still in the syndicate, and Sergeant Lam is an informant for the syndicate. When a hostile takeover results in their Godfather being violently murdered, and their friends and comrades being massacred by a rival mob boss, the three Bash Brothers have to team up and fight.
Violence, gore, and more violence ensues. Buckets of red sauce flows freely throughout the film, with dead bodies piling up as the film approaches its credits. Widely considered to be the most violent movie made in Hong Kong at its time (1985), the first CAT-III action movie ever made by Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema in general, Hong Kong Godfather delivers action, brutality, deaths, gore and tits (literally, the movie contains quite a bit of nudity between all the action) to satisfy the fans of old-school, no-holds-barred brutal 80s Hong Kong cinema.
Not to be confused with Godfathers of Hong Kong starring Andy Lau.
Hong Kong Godfather contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: In the climax, Lam hacks off a mook's arm. With an accompanying close-up on the bloodied stump falling to the floor.
- Animal Lover: In one of Wei's Establishing Character Moment depicting as a tough brute and badass with a softer side, he's seen playing with a stray puppy he picked up by the side of the road. In subsequent scenes he had adopted the puppy, which can be seen lingering near the compound of his house.
- Badass Longcoat: Mad Wei and Playboy Lung both wears black long raincoats in the final battle.
- Bad Guys Play Pool: One of Wei's fight scenes against a horde of mooks is in a snooker parlour frequented by local gangsters.
- Bloody Hilarious: The final battle sometimes enters this territory, due to being too excessive and over-the-top to the point of being somewhat hard to take seriously.
- Bolivian Army Ending: Mad Wei has mortally injured Boss Lan, but realizes both Lung and Lam are dead. Alone with his sworn enemy, Wei prepares to deliver the Coup de Grâce, but hears the police suddenly arriving and surrounding him at gunpoint. Deciding to pull a Taking You with Me, Wei finishes off Boss Lan, gets himself shot by the police in the process (so, Suicide by Cop?) and the movie ends on a freeze-frame.
- Camera Abuse: More often than not, the camera gets splattered by blood of extras getting hacked apart. One scene at the end have one of the Scary Black Man mooks getting his throat ripped open from above a set of stairs, and the mook's blood ends up spilling and covering the camera lens.
- Chairman of the Brawl: When the final battle eventually leads into Boss Lan's office penthouse, Mad Wei and Playboy Lung have to resort to grabbing chairs and using it to smash and bash through various bodyguards.
- Cool Old Guy: Boss Han, the mentor and godfather of the local triad, played by Shih Kien of Enter the Dragon fame.
- Desecrating the Dead: In the finale, Playboy Lung, after killing several mooks and fighting an Elite Mook to a standstill before finally disemboweling said mook, deliberately hacks the mook's dead body (in the exposed guts ripped open by Lung) in a rage.
- Destination Defenestration: In a scene establishing that the villains have no qualms about hurting children, Han's grandson suffers this fate when a mook lifts the boy and flings him through a thick glass panel to his death.
- Dramatic Thunder: In the final battle, in the peak of the Power Trio against Boss Lan and his personal guards, for some inexplicable reason a loud thunder is heard in the middle of the big fight. Granted, there's a rainstorm happening outside, but the thunder happening right then seems rather out of nowhere.
- Dual Wielding: Playboy Lung in the final battle dual-wield machetes, which he uses to great effect slicing and dicing faceless mooks.
- Fanservice Extra: The naked girls in the pool scene.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Various characters, regardless of their alignment, smokes in the movie. Godfather Han, Boss Lan, Mad Wei, Playboy Lung, several of Lan's lieutenants and triad higher-ups, etc.
- Gorn: Loads and loads of red sauce are used throughout the movie, spraying everywhere like a collapsing water tank filled with tomato juice. The shopping mall climax in particular has enough red sauce to recreate the elevator scene of The Shining at least twice.
- Heroic Bloodshed: With the exception that most (around 90%) of the fight scenes involves machetes, saws and melee weapons, the movie plays out like a John Woo flick, with themes of loyalty, rise to power, revenge, and action scenes involving characters Dual Wielding weapons as well as hordes and hordes of faceless extras getting killed en masse.
- Illegal Gambling Den: The opening assassination scene takes place in a triad-owned casino, where Lam barges into the area and starts shooting up the whole place, killing several gamblers in the process.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
- The fate of Boss Han, after being double-crossed by Rotten Chi under Lan's orders.
- Boss Lan's number 2 also suffers this fate, when Lung tackles him into the pointed end of Wei's machete.
- Big Bad Lan himself gets pinned to a wall by Wei's flung machete at the moment of his death. It's a Karmic Death for him considering what he did to the heroes and their Godfather.
- Impromptu Tracheotomy: Happens to several mooks in the final battle (it's either this, or Slashed Throat). One random mook in particularly had his throat graphically ripped out by Lung's dual machetes, with a close-up of his throat spewing blood like a burst pipe.
- In the Hood: The badass trio Mad Wei, Sergeant Lam and Playboy Lung all shows up in the finale wearing face-obscuring rainhoods. Which they remove once they start slaughtering extras.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: The climatic final battle of the movie where Mad Wei, Playboy Lung and Sergeant Lam have to fight their way upwards to the higher levels of a shopping mall to confront Boss Lan in his penthouse. One of the mooks cuts the power of the elevator, so the trio have to climb upstairs, one floor at a time, while hacking their way through every opponent trying to stop them.
- Machete Mayhem: Basically 90% of the action scenes of the film. Loads and loads of people gets hacked and sliced apart by machetes (and sometimes kukris) throughout the movie, with plenty of High-Pressure Blood.
- Meaningful Name: So, does it really surprise anyone at all that the character everyone calls Rotten Chi turns out to be a traitor?
- Not What It Looks Like: "Playboy" Lung's first scene features him in a bedroom with a completely naked prostitute (jugs-a-hanging-out) on his bed, with Lung, also naked, repeatedly humping his body upwards and downwards... before the camera angle reveals that he's actually doing push-ups beside his bed, with the prostitute just sitting there and watching him. In the nude. For some reason.
- Outside Ride: Lung, after being chased down by scores and scores of machete-wielding mooks, ends up clinging on the side of a passing truck while several mooks tries to chase him down unsuccessfully.
- Papa Wolf: Mad Wei towards his daughter, Siu-fung.
- Pet Gets the Keys: A variation; when Wei gets cornered by mooks trying to kill him, the puppy he adopted earlier in the film suddenly became a Heroic Dog, by pulling at the latch of a cage containing Wei's other, more fearsome dog, his Doberman. The Doberman then senses its master to be in danger, and assists Wei by chomping at the heels of the mooks trying to hack him up.
- Pool Scene: With actual naked ladies. Tits and all. Aw yeah.
- Power Trio: Playboy Lung, Mad Wei and Sergeant Lam. They are also the last three surviving members of their triad gang after being double-crossed, and the final action scene is the three of them taking on rival triad leader Lan and his army of mooks.
- Nice Mean And In Between: Playboy Lung, Mad Wei, Sergeant Lam. In that order.
- With a Friend and a Stranger: Mad Wei and his friend Lung, and Lam the stranger.
- Railing Kill: In the climax as the Power Trio kills their way upwards towards Big Bad Boss Lan's hideout, expect mooks on high balconies to be tossed over railings to their deaths every now and then.
- Rasputinian Death: The fate Wei, Lam and Lung dished out to Rotten Chi, for betraying Boss Han and causing Han's death. Firstly by abducting Rotten Chi and pushing him through a brutal beatdown for interrogation, then taking turns to stab Rotten Chi through the gut non-fatally to hurt him as much as possible, cutting the tendons of his heels, making him bleed out in a long-drawn, excruciatingly painful manner, before finally letting Wei stab him In the Back.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The final raid on Boss Lan Jia-xi's hideout on the penthouse of a shopping mall, where Mad Wei, Playboy Lung and Sergeant Lam marches into Boss Lan's hideout and slaughters their way through a building full of machete-armed mooks in retaliation for Lan killing their Godfather Han and ordering the massacre of their entire organization.
- Scary Black Man: A handful of Lan's henchmen are black thugs, notably the Afroed henchman who flung Han's grandchild through a glass panel.
- Sinister Shades: On Lan's number 2, a Mook Lieutenant who puts up a better fight than the mooks and Elite Mooks, and even killing Sergeant Lam.
- Sworn Brothers: Complete with Blood Oath, this is how Mad Wei, Playboy Lung, and Sergeant Lam swear loyalty to each other before going out to confront Lan for their final revenge battle.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Throwing Your Machete Always Works. This is how Mad Wei finish off Big Bad, Boss Lan, by flinging his huge, thick machete through Lan's chest.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Playboy Lung's first scene (he's wearing only black thongs) and also Mad Wei when recuperating from his shoulder injury.
- White Shirt of Death:
- Boss Han wears an entirely white robe at the moment of his death. Since he gets stabbed through the gut, half of his white clothing ends up speckled with red all over.
- Inverted with Lung, who wears white throughout the movie, even in scenes where he gets into intense fights and inflicted with life-threatening injuries. His clothing gets stained with plenty of his blood, but he survives. He does die in the finale, but wearing a brown shirt.
- Boss Lan dies wearing an all-white suit, with his blood staining all over the spot in his stomach where Wei flung his machete through.
