Martial arts film

Notable actors who have contributed to the genre include Tony Jaa, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jet Li, Toshiro Mifune, Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Gordon Liu, Robin Shou, and Wesley Snipes, among others.

[4] Women have also played key roles in the genre, including such actresses as Cheng Pei-pei, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Mao, Zhang Ziyi, Josephine Siao, Cynthia Rothrock, and Kuo Hsiao-Chuang.

[14][15] One of the earliest Hollywood movies to employ the use of martial arts was the 1955 film Bad Day at Black Rock, though the scenes of Spencer Tracy performed barely any realistic fight sequences, but composed mostly of soft knifehand strikes.

[1] According to The New York Times, in the 1960s Jimmy Wang Yu was "the biggest star of Asian martial arts cinema until the emergence of Bruce Lee.

[22] Martial arts films have been produced all over the world, but the genre has been dominated by Hong Kong action cinema, peaking from 1971 with the rise of Bruce Lee until the mid-1990s with a general decline in the industry, until it was revived close to the 2000s.

[23] Other notable figures in the genre include Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Donnie Yen, and Hwang Jang-lee.

[25] According to Van Damme, the film "helped give the martial arts genre a boost but also foretold certain things like the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the idea of pitting different styles against each other.

The Middle East has also participated in the genre with actors such as Youssef Mansour who became famous in the 1990s for his Egyptian films that relied on martial arts.

[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] Women have also played key roles in the genre, including such actresses as Cheng Pei-pei, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Mao, Zhang Ziyi, Josephine Siao, Cynthia Rothrock, and Kuo Hsiao-Chuang.