The master of a martial arts house in 1920’s Tianjin, Northern China, dies, making way for an inevitable schism. Shen An (Jacky Heung) and Chairman Meng (Li Yuan), represents one side, Qi Quan (Andy On Chi-Kit) the other. Chairman Meng reminds Qi Quan of certain traditional values, that ‘our circle has never mingled with hoodlums’. Meanwhile, Qi Quan thinks the circle needs ‘modernization’. Chairman Meng’s death by gunfire makes Qi Quan the main suspect, which prompts him and Shen An to duel. Dueling means planning, and Qi Quan tries to find out Shen An’s fighting secrets from a distant family friend. That family friend is Qui Ying (Tang Shiyi), who has legitimate reasons to be loyal to both of these men.

Shen and Quan are central to Xu Junfeng and Xu Haofeng’s 100 Yards, but as we all know, supporting characters makes or breaks movies. A movie choosing 1920s China has its setting inevitably peppers in Western characters who, in here, are not overtly racist. Their racism, though, manifests in the glass ceilings that they build against characters who used to live ‘freely’ in China. Female characters, though, are a different story here, as the only character with ‘definition’ is Chairman Meng, who dies. With her gone, that leaves viewers with Gui and Shen’s beloved Xia An (Bea Hayden Kuo), who’s half European. Outside of race and that Gui actually gets a fight scene, the movie seems not to care to differentiate them.

100 Yards also has its moments when it defines Shen and Quan, especially when it comes to who’s actually right. But it counters those moments by being one of the few films where cartoon-y versions of morality bubble up. Quan’s turn as the movie’s de facto villain is fun to watch especially as it involves an aesthetic transformation. He foregoes austere traditional clothing and dons a jam colored suit, a flashy statement while toeing the lines of subtlety. He also spends the latter half of the film sitting down, letting his hoodlums do the work for him. And yet, he’s still a menacing presence, as viewers remember that he can kick Shen’s bum if hoodlums can’t.

Martial arts films have pre video game rules where one man takes on an army with nary a sweaty forehead. 100 Yards adheres to this rule but there’s a practical air to the fight scenes despite of this genre trope. Shen’s precise moves is the practical part of all of this, because he can’t overexert during these long fights. That’s what the hoodlums are for, giving it their all only for Shen to beat them with moves that seem more like brushwork that traditional force. Quan wants to tire Shen out, but the latter is not going to give in to the former – it’ll be the other way around. These power moves are that multi-genre score can make viewers forgive the lack of characterization here.

100 Yards is part of MUBI’s mini-retrospective of martial arts films.