“Second Life” Poster
What do you get when you combine an actress who was around when Bruce Lee was still active, and the actor who played Bruce Lee in 2016’s Birth of the Dragon? The answer is 2024’s Second Life, which offers up a rare starring role for Yuen Qiu, and arguably an equally rare starring role for HK action thespian Philip Ng, here reuniting for the first time since appearing together in the 2016 TVB series A Fist Within Four Walls.
There are a few ways a kung-fu movie can earn a viewer’s good will from the get-go, and certainly one of them has to be a character receiving a slow-motion flying kick to the face within the first couple of minutes. In Second Life said kick comes courtesy of a grieving widow played by Zhou Xiaofei (Europe Raiders, Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend), delivered against the gangster who murdered her police officer husband during the latter’s funeral, resulting in instant death. Hauled off to prison, while incarcerated she gives birth to a son, however once he hits one he’s placed into the countries welfare system.
Skip forward 30 years and, with her prison sentence completed, Yuen Qiu (Dragon, The Young Master, The Dragon’s Snake Fist) steps into the role of the high kicking mother, now old enough to be a grandmother. Moving into her old Chinese medicine business, top of the agenda is to find the son she lost contact with while behind bars and begin to rebuild her life. Meanwhile a low-level gang enforcer played by Philip Ng (Undercover Punch and Gun, Once Upon a Time in Shanghai) rescues his boss during a bathhouse ambush, who just so happens to be the son of the gangster that received the death blow in the opening. Ng’s martial arts prowess sees him quickly rise through the ranks, however just when he thinks life couldn’t get any better, a rival gang member throws a cup of acid into his eyes, permanently blinding him.
Thankfully Second Life is helmed by Huo Suiqiang (Hunt the Wicked), who was also responsible for another production that featured a blind lead in the form of 2022’s Blind War, which effectively proved not being able to see is only a minor issue when it comes to throwing down. To be fair though vision impaired heroes have been a fixture of martial arts cinema for as long as I can remember, from fellow web movie alumni Xie Miao in Eye for an Eye: Blind Swordsman and its sequel, through to the decades spanning adventures of Zatoichi in Japan. Name a country, I’ll name you a blind character capable of wiping the floor with anyone who crosses them.
The 2 characters respective storylines converge when Ng’s boss, played by Lei Mu (The Sixth Robber, The Comeback) finds out his father’s killer has been released, and after a 30 year wait, decides it’s time to get revenge. Learning that Qiu’s actual son is believed to suffer from debilitating eyesight, Mu sends Ng on a mission to convince Qiu he’s the long-lost offspring she’s been looking for, gain her trust, and kill her. What sounds straight forward enough on paper though soon becomes more complicated in reality, as it becomes clear Qiu has maintained her fighting skills, with a knowledge of the anatomies 300 acupoints (and a self-defence reflex that stays switched on even while she’s sleeping!) proving to be a considerable challenge to Ng’s increasingly ineffective murder attempts.
In case it wasn’t clear, Second Life is a world away from the grim grittiness of its web movie brethren like The Sin Trade and Curbing Violence, instead opting for light-hearted comedy as the order of the day. Ng is joined by a bumbling sidekick played by Dao Dao (Fake Bodyguard, Super Daddy), who here clocks in a performance that’s thankfully a much-dialled back version of the grating role he played in Blind War, essentially acting as Ng’s eyes since he lost his sight. For the most part the comedy is on point, from Ng realising he has to sleep in the same bed as Qiu, to a tandem fight scene that has Qiu yelling out moves to Ng as they attempt to fend off an assailant.
The assailant in said scene is notably played by stuntwoman Liu Yaxi, who’d go on to play the lead in the Italian kung-fu flick The Forbidden City a couple of years later. Her supporting turn here makes a clear case for why she was chosen as the lead, with an entertaining assassination attempt that incorporates a genius usage of Qiu’s medicine cabinet drawers, courtesy of action choreographers Long Zhao (King of Snipers) and Wei Chao (Poison Hunting Storm). Second Life gives them ample opportunities to flex their action credentials, with the talented cast all given a chance to shine, although for long time kung-fu cinema fans the true joy will be in seeing Yuen Qiu front and centre.
Aged 74 at the time of its release, the same charisma that re-captured fans hearts when she re-emerged after an almost 20-year absence from the screen in 2004’s Kung Fu Hustle is still very much present and accounted for (although personally, I’ll always have a soft spot for her appearances in Dragon Lee’s early 1980’s Korean outings!). From a hilarious Peking Opera inspired fight scene complete with prerequisite music, to a finale that sees her unleashing with a guandao, Second Life would only be half the movie it is without her presence.
Director Huo Suiqiang doesn’t only have comedy in mind though, with an equal amount of attention paid to the more dramatic side of proceedings, as Ng’s wayward orphan turned gangster gradually finds himself becoming attached to the very target he’s expected to take out. In many ways Second Life could be looked at as Qiu’s version of Sammo Hung’s 2016 classic The Bodyguard, just swap out a school-aged girl for a 31-year-old man (who in reality was in his mid-40’s at the time of release, so some minor suspension of disbelief will be required from some viewers!). Like Sammo, Qiu also discovers she has the onset of Alzheimer’s, and as the narrative progresses her memory begins to fade, played effectively to both tug on the heart strings and for occasional comedic effect. The mix of action, melodrama, and comedy feels like a classic throwback to the whiplash inducing tonal shifts that HK cinema of old, but it works well.
It’s the same tone that allows the finale to work, with Suiqiang wisely making the creative decision to have most of the heavy lifting done by Zhou Xiaofei, who played the younger version of Qiu in the opening scenes. It’s a similar setup to how Masanori Mimoto replaces Akari Takaishi for the finale of Japan’s Ghost Killer from the same year, allowing for (in this case) a younger, more physically agile performer to step in and throw down. Teamed up with Ng the pair are forced to face off against a quartet of assassins, comprising of a returning Liu Yaxi, a hulking westerner (Oleksandr Lariukin), a high kicking capoeira practitioner (the single named Neguin), and a katana wielding Japanese schoolgirl (Yang Zhi-Qing). It’s a well-choreographed 2 against 4, with the 2 having the added disadvantage of blindness and dementia, and it’s a credit to Suiqiang and the action team that it’s executed in such an entertaining way.
Ultimately Second Life feels like a welcome throwback to when action comedies ruled supreme, and not every movie needed to be about poker faced protagonists dispatching their enemies in the most violent way possible. Yuen Qiu and Philip Ng make for a surprisingly affecting pair, and between the frequent action scenes their chemistry and developing relationship is just as enjoyable to watch. I’d like to hope Second Life won’t be Qiu’s swansong (she admittedly has a blink and you’ll miss it cameo in The Shadow’s Edge), however if it is, then it’s a worthy one. For anyone who isn’t here for Yuen Qiu, then the heady mix of shoes with hidden blades, deadly kisses, and pressure point-fu should be more than enough for any discerning kung-fu cinema fan.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10
