Bloodsport - Jean Claude Van Damme (1987) - Lung Fu Shan, Hong Kong

The opening scenes of this Van Damme classic (arguably the film that really launched his career proper) start in the usual foreign-film-in-exotic-location manner with a sweeping helicopter view of the island and harbour. There's lots to see as we swoop past Lung Fu Shan from Pinewood Battery on the aforementioned hilltop, to the Shun Tak Centre with its red stripes in the middle distance and the west flank of Victoria peak on the right.

Lung Fu Shan is the smaller hilltop in the lower middle of the screen grabs and the excavated bit on the top is what remains of Pinewood Battery. It's well worth a visit if you haven't been there already and is one of many similar ex-artillery emplacements that still survive in the territory.

In the shots above we are looking NW across to Kowloon and of course in the mid-80's when the film was made, there was no sign of the west Kowloon reclamation that now dominates that part of the harbour. What does surprise me though from this view is there seems to be a fair amount of haze limiting the view - not something I would have expected in the 1980's. It seems as though HK's pollution problem goes much further back than I realised!