A Chinese wuxia kung fu directed by Yuen Woo-ping, starring Donnie Yen and Yu Rongguang.
A vigilante is trying to defend the residents of a town from corrupt officials. This man is also running a doctor's office. Another doctor and his son come to town and this doctor promises the officials that he will catch the vigilante. There is one official who is not corrupt and warns the doctors of the government's actions. The doctor eventually meet and join forces against the top official.
Very good! It's been about 12 years since I've seen this, so I watched it again. The plot is clear and the characters are relatively identifiable. What made this stand out to me was the professionally done production and exaggerated fight scenes. Everything was filmed and edited excellently, with good framing and camera movement. The fights used Hong Kong wire, props, dust, fire, buildings, etc... to make them each unique and interesting. There were poles used as weapons and recitation of moves, something that I really like in martial arts films. Recitation of moves is only slightly less cool than extended training scenes. The style seemed close to the newer Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) style of wuxia, but it was more kung fu than swordplay, so I labeled it both. I rate this awesome because it's such an exemplary martial arts film. Watch it.
A Chinese American wuxia directed by Yuen Woo-ping, starring Donnie Yen and Michelle Yeoh.
A thief is sent from West Lotus to steal the Green Destiny sword from Sir Te's house where it was supposed to be hidden. Shu Lien captures the thief and hires a group of "Iron Way" warriors to help her guard it. Shu Lien's new student turns out to be related to the thief, everyone fights and most of them die.
Sometimes sequels are not so great. The original Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) was much better because it seemed sincere and there was not as much fast editing going on. The slower pace of the original allowed audiences to digest what was going on before something else happened, but this sequel seemed rushed. The flashbacks, storytelling and training scenes were too short. It seemed like the audience was not allowed time to get to know the characters in order to care about them. I also noticed that people were flying for no real reason. In the original, the wire flying was always motivated by a purpose in the fight or the plot. The plot in this was unoriginal: they are still fighting over that same sword. I know that the current trend in movies is sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes, but there are actually some decent original films being made. Sorry to Bother You (2018) is a good example of this. Sometimes it's best to let sleeping dogs lie and not fix what is not broken (cliche' sentence anyone?). I rate this tolerable because it was insincere, unoriginal, but upheld the basic requirements of the genre.
A Chinese kung fu directed by Yuen Woo-ping, starring Yuen Biao and Kwan Tak-hing.
A fighter's wife who used to wear bells was killed in an ambush at a restaurant, causing him to become evil. He is hiding out with an opera troupe and wants to kill a cowardly man who runs a laundry business.
I was expecting another run of the mill kung fu snoozer, but this was worthwhile. The plot was a little convoluted (aren't they always?) but had a reason for why the villain went evil. Not many films explain why the bad guy is bad. The casting for him and the hero was great. Biao was the hero and Tak-hing was the teacher (his constant role). The villain doesn't even have a wikipedia page, but he was perfect for the part. There were a few too many other characters, but that's another staple of the genre that goes with the unnecessary plot points. A little bit of crappy acting is yet another of the unavoidable kung fu cliches, but the main characters did a great job. I can't really say much about the dialogue, but I found good subtitles. Sets and costumes looked extremely recycled, like every kung fu flick ever made shared them. The exception was the dog costume for the lion dance scenes. The choreography for those and the fights was done exceptionally well. This is not just because it looks good, but because of context and use of props and special effects. It wasn't just "Let's fight!", but a lion dance competition fight, accidentally showing eagle claw techniques in front of the teacher, etc. I also liked the use of Hong Kong wire and wuxia style long sleeve weapons. The editing was all very quick and the camera-work straight forward, but I could see what was going on and there were a few creative angles to give context to some situations like when the killer scales an alley wall. One of my least favorite kung fu cliches is bad sound and this had it. I swear every sound was peaking the levels, with most being distorted. IMDb has a rating of 7.5/10 listed for this, AllMovie has 0/5 AllMovie rating with 3.5/5 user rating and Rotten Tomatoes has 85% Audience Score. 57.5% average seems really low to me and all because of the zero from AllMovie. I rate this good because I'm so tired of kung fu flicks that it hurts and even I liked it. Watch this if you're just as bored with whoosh, swack and fighting for no reason.
A Chinese kung fu directed by Yuen Woo-ping, starring Sammo Hung, Kwan Tak-hing and Yuen Biao.
Because of misunderstandings and treason, all of the problems of one kung fu school are blamed on a student from another. The student meets an old drunken master who trains him before he confronts the rival school.
This was pretty standard, but entertaining. I haven't seen a good kung fu flick in a while. The hour 47 duration passed moderately with dynamic pacing. The plot was murky and confusing. It also followed the kung fu revenge formula, which I expected. I actually liked the characters. Sammo Hung is great at comedy by being a fool and the Beggar So character played a classic drunken master. There were some dialogue jokes that crossed the language barrier and all of the actors did a good job in their stereotypical roles. The fights were action-packed and choreographed very well. Sets and costumes were exactly what I've come to expect from Chinese kung fu films of the late '70s and early '80s. There were wardrobe jokes when Sammo's clothes were missing or his pants fell down. The only thing that I noticed in camera-work was extra close ups during the fights, mostly hands demonstrating animal styles. Editing cuts also happened much faster during fights and there were slow motion shots mixed in. I didn't really notice to much wire being used for special effects. Audio was terrible. The mix was clipping on anything louder than normal conversation. I won't even go into "woosh" and "ha!" here. Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+, J. Doyle Wallis of DVD Talk rated it 3.5/5, Bill Gibron of DVD Talk rated it 93/100 and it has 7.5/10 on IMDB. This averages to a 78.75 C+ grade and I agree. It was mostly standard and cookie cutter. I liked the 2 main protagonists though. I rate this adequate.
A kung fu directed by Yuen Woo-ping.Jackie Chan is a rowdy son who is sent to learn kung fu from his uncle, Beggar So who is a master of drunken boxing.The audio was in Chinese and subtitles were provided. The video definitely showed the age of the film.check out: no wire!Jackie Chan + Simon Yuen + drunken boxing = a really good kung fu movie! This is the original drunken master by the way, not one of the many sequels, spin-offs, or imitations. If you like kung fu flicks, you'll like this.
