100 Yards: A Hidden Ode To Chinese Martial Arts Cinema
by Heesun Park
Chinese martial arts cinema never did much for me for the longest time. As a child, I remember watching my parents’ DVD copy of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and feeling absolutely nothing. The extensive fantastical wire work, the flashy and quick movements, the interpersonal melodramatics—none of it thrilled me. Even as a teen, I just couldn’t get myself to click with it. Hollywood action cinema gave me deafening explosions, body-ripping gunshots, and heartstopping car crashes but Chinese martial arts movies were seemingly cloaked in a campy shroud of quiet and stillness. As pathetic as it sounds, it wasn’t until years later, when my palate for cinema began to mature and I took an East Asian Cinema class as a university student, that my lens was able to change.
A directorial collaboration between brothers Xu Haofeng and Xu Junfeng, 100 Yards (2023) is a martial arts film set against the backdrop of a westernizing 1920s Northern China. When an influential martial arts master passes away and appoints his apprentice Quan as his successor, the master’s son An engages the apprentice in a power struggle that upheaves both their martial arts circle and the entire city.
The first half of 100 Yards is visually beautiful. The fight scenes between An and Quan are well-choreographed. The set, props, and costumes are elaborate and have been clearly invested in. The same goes for the camera quality and color grading. It is clear this is not an overambitious period piece lacking in any funding. But, paired with abrupt cuts between shots, rough transitions between plot points, and overacted scenes, one might find it difficult to become immersed in the political dramatics of the story. The film is stiff with an overwhelming feeling that it is a movie, a production.
Underneath the fascia of 100 Yards, however, there is an earnestness that reveals a love letter to the Chinese martial arts genre.
The Chinese martial arts genre centers around a tradition of technique, and this technique centers around two things: the technology of the actor and the technology of film production. While Hollywood action cinema obscures the presence of the actor by overly relying on film production machinery (a shaky camera, extensive VFX, intense stunts, and so forth) to elicit an audience response, martial arts cinema uses the strength of film production machinery to capture the true competence of the actor, that is, a physicality—or technology—that cannot be faked by the camera. And it is the constant exchange of these two technologies that make Chinese martial arts cinema so engaging.
The fight choreography of 100 Yards follows this tradition faithfully. Every single duel is legible and framed with wide shots that show each and every point of contact precisely. There seemingly are no cop-outs from the actors. It can be believed that they are performing and receiving each and every strike with their own bodies. Not only this, there also appear to be meta themes embedded in the script itself. The first half of the film repeats the idea of performance and viewing. The film opens with the elderly master ordering An and Quan to battle before him in a performance that becomes the last thing the master sees. After that, when Quan assumes his master’s position and An finds himself working at a bank upon leaving the martial arts world, An’s manager orders An to duel before him and his Western guests—again as a form of viewed performance. These themes exist even outside of An’s martial arts world. When he ends his relationship with his non-martial artist lover, she reveals secrets that show she, too, has been performing for An.
These themes, again, call back to the tradition of martial arts cinema as a genre that centers around the actor’s true competence as a martial arts performer viewed through the lens of a film camera. This thematic storytelling is no doubt intended by Xu Haofeng, who is also the screenwriter behind 100 Yards. Outside the film, Xu is a seasoned martial artist who also wrote Wong Kar-wai’s celebrated martial arts film The Grandmaster (2013). It is through this informed lens that even the overacted moments of the film become no longer hurdles in the audience’s viewing experience but instead something intentional and in line with the genre.
So, yes, a lot of things can be analyzed and said about the first half of 100 Yards. The second half of the film, however, is simply and undeniably magic.
There is a fight scene between An and Quan right in the middle of the runtime that grabs you and never lets go. From then on, the directorial style begins to shine, stakes begin to feel high, and the battles between An and Quan seem to just get better and better. When the climax of the film takes the form of a 1:100 street fight, the actors lose any sort of banal and dry stoicism from the first half to possess undeniable command and charisma instead. Their gaze and presence become breathtaking, and even the performances of the supporting cast seem to grow in magnitude.
In short, 100 Yards is not just for lovers of Chinese martial arts movies. It is an eye candy film that all can find enthralling—though knowing of the genre would surely enrich the experience.
