20 best movies like By Hook or By Crook (1980)

Asian Hawk (Jackie Chan) leads a mercenary team to recover several lost artifacts from the Old Summer Palace, the bronze heads of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals which were sacked by the French and British armies from the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860. Assisted by a Chinese student & a Parisian lady, Hawk stops at nothing to accomplish the mission.

Losing her mother at a tender age, Yim Wing Chun (Bai Jing) grew up under the wing of Master Ng Mui (Kara Hui), a fugitive in the end of the Qing dynasty. Inspired by Ng Mui's Shaolin kung fu, the boyish Wing Chun develops a kind of martial arts that would one day be named after her, while she strikes up a romance with righteous businessman Liang Baochou (Yu Shaoqun). When the minions of the Qing government draw near, Wing Chun must break out of their ambush to join Ng Mui in the showdown with Kam Ying (Collin Chou), the evil master who helps the Qing empire hunt down its enemies with his formidable Eagle Claws kung fu!

A soldier-turned-high school teacher uses unusual methods to reach to a class of poor students, while dealing with a greedy entrepreneur and his gang of fighters as well as the government.

Set in 1920s Shanghai, Ma Zouri and Xiang Feitian establish a notorious beauty pageant called the Flowers Competition. All of the city's elite attend the gala event, but when Wanyan Ying unexpectedly wins, it sets into motion a series of tragic events that change their destinies.

A tale of revenge, honor and greed follows a group of misfits that gets involved with a kitchen cleaver made from the top five swords of the martial arts world in this wild and brash action comedy.

The sequel to the assassin action-comedy The Hitman's Bodyguard.

Chinese archeology professor Jack teams up with beautiful Indian professor Ashmita and assistant Kyra to locate lost Magadha treasure. In a Tibetan ice cave, they find the remains of the royal army that had vanished together with the treasure, only to be ambushed by Randall, the descendent of a rebel army leader. When they free themselves, their next stop is Dubai where a diamond from the ice cave is to be auctioned. After a series of double-crosses and revelations about their past, Jack and his team travel to a mountain temple in India, using the diamond as a key to unlock the real treasure.

In the waning years of the Ming Dynasty, the Bruneian Empire offers a rare creature to the nation as a gift. Ocean, a member of the Imperial Secret Police, has been tasked to tame the beast. Though the furry beast appears ferocious on the outside, Ocean discovers that it is kind by nature. Not wanting to turn the beast into a killing machine on the battlefield, Ocean secretly releases the beast into the wild and elopes with Frigid, the daughter of a man executed on false charges.

The story of a farmer forced into conscription, who has been looking to get out of the army ever since. His great chance arrives when he stumbles upon a wounded general from an enemy state, and he kidnaps him, intending to claim credit for the capture, which includes five "mu" of land, and most importantly, honorable discharge from the army.

Danny is a young martial arts enthusiast who arrives in Hong Kong to head a school of Choy Lee Fut owned by his wealthy father.

A man looking for the release of a long-time prisoner takes a police officer, his daughter, and a group of strangers hostage.

Cousins Thomas and David, owners of a mobile restaurant, team up with their friend Moby, a bumbling private detective, to save the beautiful Sylvia, a pickpocket.

A Buddhist lama and an evil wizard battle for the Palace of Heaven.

After being dumped by his fiancé, heartbroken Hong Kong police officer Fallon Zhu gains 200+ pounds. His superiors demote him to the job of escorting convicts to Japan. When a convict in his custody mysteriously dies, he must team up with citizen Thor to solve the mystery.

Cynthia Rothrock helps to protect a Buddhist boy from villains who wish to stop him from becoming the Prince of the Sun.

After winning his first competition, Takumi focuses his attention on drift racing, a sport he has unknowingly perfected while delivering tofu in his father's Toyota AE86.

Gordon Liu stars as a Chinese martial arts student struggling to relate to his new Japanese wife. When a series of martial misunderstandings spirals into an international incident, he's forced to take on seven of Japan's most powerful martial arts masters, each an expert in a different discipline, ranging from karate to samurai to ninjitsu.

Uncle Tak is famous for using Chinese herbal medicines to cure diseases. A martial arts expert, he also teaches the young how to defend themselves. One of his students, Johnny, dreams of monopolizing the teaching of kung fu throughout the United States. To accomplish this, he tries to kill Uncle Tak. Chuck, Uncle Tak's best student from Hong Kong, comes to Los Angeles to find his master. Chuck is willing to let Johnny have his way, and tries to take Uncle Tak back to Hong Kong. But Johnny and his men will not leave Chuck alone. Chuck, on his way back to Hong Kong, returns for the showdown.

Tens of millennia ago, eight gods who ceaselessly fought each other were exiled to earth. For generations, they have been reincarnated as mere mortals, and they won't be allowed back to heaven until they've learned to coexist in harmony. Then in today's Hong Kong, a mortuary beautician and her has-been singer dad are chased for a huge sum of money they don't owe. Turns out her materialistic stepmom has taken a tycoon's advance payment on the false promise of organizing a concert that she can't deliver. The family is therefore forced to go on the run, and along the way they meet an assortment of quirky people, including a mute baker, a kung fu cab driver, an aspiring musician and her crafty sidekick. Through a series of comic misadventures, the seven of them come to realize that they used to be gods and have a mission in this life, but...who is the eighth god that has yet to rejoin them?

A rich man's son believes himself to be the best kung fu fighter in Canton. Unfortunately, his father, anxious for his son's safety, bribes all his opponents to lose. After a humiliating defeat at the hands of an actor in a traveling theatre company, the son resolves to find a better teacher.