"Gung fu without honor is just fighting."
"Just thought it'd be a better bet to face off against you, the great Three Tigers. Well, the old you. Then again, the now you is the old you. Or is it the lesser you?"
—Carter
The Paper Tigers is a 2020 American Martial Arts-Dramedy film written and directed by Bao Tran in his directorial debut.
The plot follows three childhood friends — Danny, Hing, and Jim, better known as The Three Tigers — who come together after their Old Master Sifu Cheung is found dead. While they have not fought or have seen one another in years, they must juggle their dead-end jobs, dad duties, overcome old grudges, and seek out the one who killed their master and avenge his death.
This show provides examples of:
- An Aesop:
- Actively looking for a fight isn't honorable.
- On the other hand, when walking away from a fight isn't an option, one must stand their ground.
- Affably Evil: Zhen Fan is a hitman who murdered his own sifu, but when finally confronted, he's remarkably polite and straightforward. Though he does crack up at Danny suddenly getting a phone call in the middle of their first confrontation, he doesn't mock him like Carter did. When they finally fight, he's even willing to give the win of the first round to Danny for drawing some blood from him.
- Ambiguous Situation: Zhen Fan never reveals the specific reason why he killed Sifu Cheung.
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
- While most of the gung fu fighters have a bit of this in them, special mention goes to Carter. Unlike the Tigers, Carter had continued to train in gung fu, officially teaching in Master Wong's school, and has a chip on his shoulder for the many times they defeated him. He gives Koans in gratuitous Chinese, identifies as Chinese when it suits him, gives overly elaborate opening stances, and takes obscene pleasure in humiliating the Tigers. After Hing is nearly killed by the Fourth Disciple and Danny and Jim decide to confront him, Carter drops the smugness.
- The Tigers themselves were this in their teen years, which is why Carter carries such a grudge against them in the present. Danny in particular seemed to get his kicks from regularly humiliating Carter in beimo, at times even going a bit overboard with his hits. Them seeking out fights for glory and money ultimately was what lead to the group fracturing, as Sifu Cheung voiced his displeasure to Danny about how they were misusing his teachings.
- Zhen Fan is a darker yet more affable version of this. He's completely secure in his fighting prowess, having no problems showing off his physical prowess to the Tigers in order to intimidate them. When Danny asks him what the terms of the third round of their beimo are, he lightly scoffs at the idea of their fight even lasting that long. Then there's the fact that in-between assassinations, he's been going around challenging and brutally beating other gung fu practitioners.
- Bland-Name Product: Danny promises to take his son to "Magic Land" where they can ride "Mount Splash".
- Bumbling Dad: Danny loves his son, but has trouble balancing his commitments between his job and being a parent. He shows up late to pick his son up from his ex-wife, fails to follow through on his promise to take him to Magic Land, and then convinces his son to lie about their weekend to his mother to avoid getting in trouble with her. While driving to his beimo with Zhen Fan, he outright admits to his ex-wife over the phone that she's been a better mother and father than he ever could be. Incidentally, it's only when he confronts his failings as a parent that he finally begins taking steps to legitimately reconnect with his son.
- The Cameo: Yuji Okumoto (who helped produce the movie) makes an appearance as a waiter at a fancy restaurant.
- Chekhov's Skill: Hing is able to tell a student's kick is weak based on the sound it makes when it hits the bag. They're later able to pick Sifu Cheung's killer out of a gym full of criminals based on the sound of his kicks.
- Cruel Mercy: The beimo with Zhen Fan ends with Danny throwing him roughly against a wall, giving him a borderline paralyzing injury. Rather than toss him off of the roof as agreed on prior, Danny calls 911 and leaves the phone by Zhen Fan, leaving Zhen Fan to languish silently in frustration as the 911 operator sends help to his location.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Poison Fingers is a gung fu move that, with a few taps on the back, can cause a Time-Delayed Death indistinguishable from a heart attack.
- Deadpan Snarker: Danny can't help but get in a few snide digs whenever Carter tries to act Chinese.
- Danny: Yeah, those pesky Westerners.
- Disneyland Dad: Danny promises to take his son Ed to Magic Land when he runs late to pick him up, overcompensating for his tardiness. Whenever he needs to commit to something, his work calls him last minute and takes him away. This is apparently a regular thing with him.
- Dodgy Toupee: It's revealed that Hing was wearing a wig and is actually completely bald when Carter snags it off him in their fight.
- The Dreaded: Zhen Fan, a Triad hitman and Sifu Cheung's fourth disciple, has made such a fearsome reputation for himself defeating all the local gung fu masters, even Carter fears him. When Zhen Fan came to his dojo to challenge him, instead of fighting, Carter admits to having closed the dojo and pretended to not be there.
- Duel to the Death: The fight between Danny and Zhen Fan is this, with the winner getting to throw the loser off the roof, which includes Jim if Danny were to lose, much to Jim's surprise.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes the death of their sifu, confronting some very personal demons, and Hing nearly dying to Zhen Fan, but in the end, the Tigers have rekindled their friendship and love of gung fu, with their reputations as prodigies restored. Jim is seen teaching kids gung fu, Hing has revived their sifu's free clinic, and Danny has finally managed to connect with his son.
- Foreign Culture Fetish: Carter wears Chinese clothes, speaks Chinese randomly, quotes Ice Cream Koans, and says "westerners" don't truly understand kung fu.
- Fragile Speedster: The three punks fight with flashy, acrobatic techniques and run circles around the middle-aged Three Tigers, but are taken down (albeit barely) in only a few blows when Hing and Jim manage to land hits (or just one, in Jim's case). It's telling that their only victory is over Danny, the only one in a similar weight class.
- Four Is Death: Sifu Cheung was killed by his fourth disciple.
- Funny Background Event: When the three gung fu punks take a selfie with Sifu Cheung's portrait, while the scene is focused on Danny, Hing, and Carter's disgust at the display of disrespect, the monk presiding over the funeral actually joins in the picture.
- Handicapped Badass: Hing actually puts up a pretty good fight against a younger opponent despite having a permanent limp due to a work injury.
- Happiness in Minimum Wage: While discussing the late Sifu Cheung, the titular paper tigers agree that while he was more than capable of opening a dojo of his own, he was far more content being a modest chef, believing martial arts (Gung Fu) should not be used to make money. This ends up deconstructed in that he expected his students to follow this same mandate leading to a domino effect of falling outs. When Danny went to him to announce they'd be fighting in a tournament in Japan, Cheung disagreed with him to the point they fought. Danny quit in shame, never telling Jim and Hing, who slowly lost touch with Cheung afterward. All this resulted in Cheung taking on a new student, one with much darker ambitions.
- The Heart: Hing is this to the main trio in the present, being the only one who is still trying to live by their sifu's teachings. He's the one who pushes the investigation into sifu's death and later the one most dead-set on facing Zhen Fan to prevent him from using gung fu as an assassination technique.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: The Three Tigers were the kings of the local martial arts scenes in their teenage years. As middle-aged men? Not so much.
- Jim's the best of them in terms of physical fitness on account of being an MMA coach, but is so out of practice with gung fu, he's forgotten even the basic salute. He wins the fight against one of the Punks only through sheer strength and loses the quickest to Carter who is just as strong but also has the technique to back it up.
- Hing can still hit hard and has maintained some level of skill throughout the years, but is clearly out of shape due to his weight gain and having suffered a permanent leg injury ten years prior to the film.
- Formerly the best fighter among them, Danny has deteriorated the most as a martial artist due to working an office job requiring no physical exertion and having failed to keep up his training. His personal life is also a mess, being divorced from his ex-wife and typically failing to follow up on his parenting commitments.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Carter is an over-the-top Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy par-excellence who relishes talking down to and later beating up the Tigers in revenge for his many defeats years ago. That being said, he is shown to be a legitimately disciplined teacher in Master Wong's school, and he drops the smug attitude after Hing is nearly killed by the fourth Disciple.
- Sifu Cheung is first shown to be a very strict master whose unyielding adherence to his martial arts code partially contributed to his three pupils falling out with each other and eventually leaving him, and left him so bitter, he initially gave up on having any more disciples. Despite that, it's implied that his bitterness came from having been close enough to his students to view them like sons, and is shown to have legitimately cared for them when the Three Tigers find an old VHS tape of the four of them celebrating Jim's birthday over dinner, with Sifu Cheung wishing Jim a warm and sincere happy birthday. Carter's sifu also mentions that Sifu Cheung lent him the money to start his own gung-fu school despite being from different clans.
- Lovable Coward: After Danny shows wins the first round of his fight with Zhen Fan, instead of standing his ground in the second round when his superiorly skilled opponent gets to attack first, he runs behind a shed with Zhen Fan having to chase him in circles, trying to run out the clock. Knowing that this is a fight to the death and that Danny is actually vastly outmatched, Jim just eggs Danny on while laughing himself.
- Magic Feather: While fighting Zhen Fan, Jim offers Dan some "performance enhancers" but Dan refuses. Jim then admits that they're fake and he was just trying to invoke this trope.
- The Medic: Hing serves as one to the group, having been taught Chinese medicine by their old sifu and applies a Chinese pressure point technique to revive Danny and Jim when they get knocked out in fights. It's revealed that after those two left, Sifu Cheung switched to teaching Hing only healing techniques instead of martial arts and opened a free clinic for the local Chinese community. However, he expected Hing to also work for free, even at the expense of taking time off his paying job. Hing eventually got fed up and failed to show up one day, with their sifu never reaching out to him again after that. The ending sees Hing following his sifu's footsteps by reviving the free clinic.
- Mighty Glacier: Hing's lost his agility due to his weight and leg injury but wins his fight against the Punks through sheer knockout, not to mention being strong enough to lift and throw his opponent around.
- Miles Gloriosus: Carter's perfectly willing to fight the three middle-aged, out-of-practice Tigers but he locked his doors and hid when Zhen Fan came calling.
- Negated Moment of Awesome: When Danny and Hing run into one of the Punks where their sifu was murdered, he makes a run for it. When they try to chase him, they immediately run out of steam. The scene is punctuated with Letting the Air out of the Band.
- Paper Tiger: As the title implies, the Three Tigers are this. While they were the best in their prime, by the time the movie begins, they are all middle-aged, out of practice, and out of shape. Danny has become afraid of confrontation and has trouble focusing, Hing has gained weight and has a leg injury, and while Jim is the most physically capable, his skill has atrophied.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Two minor examples:
- One of the Punks calls Jim "nigga" in order to antagonize him. After Jim beats him by choking him out, the Punk apologizes.
- Danny's son, Ed, has a bully who calls Ed's friend "faggot" in addition to beating the two of them up.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Carter is a white guy who wears Chinese clothes and spouts proverbs in Chinese.
- Red Baron: Being the best of the Three Tigers in their youth, Danny was known as "Danny Eight Hands." This gets flipped on its head when as middle-aged men, Danny's become the worst of the three, with the Punk leader easily beating him and taunting him as "Danny No Hands."
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Zhen Fan insists on fighting to the death with Danny to determine Sifu Cheung's true successor as "the fiercest tigers cannot share the same mountain." When Danny wins their match, instead of throwing the incapacitated Zhen Fan off the roof as agreed upon, he leaves behind a phone dialing 911 and tells him to "keep your damn mountain."
- Shout-Out: In the Dénouement, when the waiter played by Yuji Okumoto suggests he could be the Fourth Tiger on account of knowing some karate, Danny asks Jim and Hing if they like the sound of "The Three Tigers and The Karate Kid."
- Super-Reflexes: It is established that what made Danny the best of the Three Tigers was his ability to predict his opponent's moves with his intense focus, depicting it as seeing his opponent attacking him in slow motion.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Jim's so out of practice with gung fu, he's lost much of the technique and can't even remember the salute. But as the one of the Three Tigers who's stayed in shape, he wins his fight against the Punk by just choking him out.
- We Used to Be Friends: At the start of the film, the Three Tigers haven't seen or spoken to each other in decades. Jim resents Danny in particular due to the latter suddenly quitting a martial arts tournament in Japan they were invited to years ago without explanation, which cost him as Danny's second the opportunity to compete. It's only after it's revealed that Danny had attended the tournament against their sifu's explicit wishes, to the point where they fought, and that he was too ashamed to tell anyone what had happened, that the rift between them begins to heal.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Dan's son Ed ends up sitting in the living room alone, playing with a remote control car, because Dan has to take care of a work emergency.
- The Whitest Black Guy: A Running Gag is how Carter will randomly switch to Chinese only for Danny and Hing, who are actually Asian, to say they don't understand him.
- Who's Laughing Now?: Carter takes great pleasure in beating and humiliating the presently out-of-practice Tigers in a beimo as revenge for the numerous embarrassing defeats Danny handed to him when they were teenagers.
