AllMovie

Father and Son is a breakaway from the usual kung-fu killer-thrillers that roar out of Hong Kong studios on a weekly basis. The men in the story are San-muk (Shek Lui), a strong-willed father with a no-end, low-income job as a clerical worker, and a son Ka-hing (Lee Yu-tin as the young boy (Cheng Yu-or as the teenager) who is often at odds with his father's authoritarian hold over him. In spite of his son's failure in school, the father is determined he should get a good education so he marries his oldest daughter off to a rich man ensuring that the son will have his college years paid for -- in the United States. When the son finally does well and graduates, he sends his diploma to his father, who is so completely overwhelmed and excited at how his life-long dreams are finally coming true, that the news causes a fatal heart attack. He and his son had parted four years earlier in friendship, their differences buried and with a mutual understanding. Now the son returns to the backwater home where he grew up; his father who was responsible for his advancement in the world is no longer around to enjoy his success. The young man sits in his room and remembers life in their squatter housing, and as he thinks back on his childhood and the poverty of his family -- the film unfolds in flashbacks that explain how he got to where he is now and what the relationship to his father meant over the years.