A military leader has destroyed Shaolin and some various fighters team up to defeat him.
Yet another standard kung fu. If you're looking to see what old school fu was like, it was like this. If you're looking to watch a good movie, steer clear. How many revenge plots involving the destruction of Shaolin by a singular villain can there be? The shallow characters did not do it for me. They were like every other fighter in any of the hundreds of kung fu films I've seen. Dialogue could have been copied and pasted from other films and I seriously doubt that anyone would notice. You probably wouldn't even have to change the names. Acting was the same. Same, same, same. There was lots of fighting with weapons and hand to hand as well as discussion of different styles. I swear the filmmakers all used the same sets and costumes. They were like community property for anyone in China who wanted to make a kung fu flick. There was some shot variety in the camera-work and editing. Two that I noticed were an actor seen from between the feet of a horse and a flashback to training during the final fight. Special effects were the same as every other kung fu and so was audio. IMDb lists a rating of 6/10, AllMovie lists 2/5 AllMovie rating with 3.5/5 user ratings and Rotten Tomatoes lists 44% audience score for an average of 53.5%. That sounds right to me because it was so dull and could not be differentiated from any other fu flick. I rate this tolerable because it was not painful to watch.
I might be taking a break from this soon. School taught me too much about movies and I've watched too many. 2500 and something reviews over 8 years is not a bad run if that's all I do with my film blog.
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