lung (jackie chan) and tiger (wai pak), his older brother, are two orhans who have been raised and trained by master tien (tin fung), at his school. tiger is to represent tien's school in an annual lion dance, be he feins injury and, for a price, secretly represents a rival school. lung takes his place, but is shocked to find himself competing with his brother and loses.

when master tien discovers tiger's betrayal, he throws him out of the school in disgrace. however, after a plea from lung, tien agrees that tiger can come back, if only lung can find him. meanwhile, tiger has gone back to the rival school and gets involved in a plan to free master kam (whang in-shik), its imprisoned leader. things get worse for the brothers when tiger discovers that master kam is bad news, whilst lung, mistaken for his brother, finds himself in trouble with the law...

as well as being the star, 'the young master' was choreographed, written and directed by jackie chan. on the whole, jackie does a good job. still, the film's narrative suffers (apparently) as a result of the extemsive cuts that were required to reduce it to a watchable length, after chan's initial cut ran for nearly three hours. this is forgivable, though, as traces of jackie's signature stylings are present; touches of humour, drama and a healthy dose of complex, gymnastic action sequences.

chan does a good job, as does whang in-shik; who's introduction and final showdown, with jackie, are highlights of the film. yuen biao has a small role the son the local chief of police (sek kin), who probably outshines him, and lily li does some good work as his sister. these performances, along with the action sequences and some good comedic elements make for an engaging and fun film.

good stuff.