THE DELINQUENT (Hong Kong, 1973)
Director: Chang Cheh and Kuei Chih-hung
Starring: Wong Chung, Lily Li, Betty Pei Ti, Fan Meisheng

One of the Shaw Brothers’ best, and most underrated, directors, Kuei Chih-hung (Boxer’s Omen) made his directorial debut with this attack dog of a film that leaps off the screen and goes for the audience’s throat. Chang Cheh is listed as co-director, but he really just slapped his name on to reassure Run Run Shaw—every angry inch of this movie belongs to Kuei, from the opening credits of star Wang Chung smashing through photos of Hong Kong, to a final fish-eye shot from the POV of a dying man. One of the most aggressively experimental action movies ever to come out of Shaw Brothers, Kuei directed it like he’d never get a chance to make another movie, cramming in every wild idea he ever had. Wang plays an angry young man sweating to death in the grotty ghetto of modern-day Hong Kong, watching life pass him by one salty teardrop at a time. Throwing punches at the slightest instigation, Wang is recruited by a local gang and he has only one rule: never rob the warehouse where his dad works as a security guard. It takes about five minutes for that rule to get thoroughly violated, and after a long, tense, excruciating buildup, the film erupts into a final series of brutal fights that will leave you breathless. Truly feral.