Okay, sure, so perhaps I'm not the target audience for this type of movie, but the happenings here are pretty ridiculous even by weepie standards. The whole reason Edward wants to go to into the cholera-infected town is because Naomi cheated on him. Personally, I'd just go for a divorce, but apparently, the risk of having to crap and puke your guts out is much more of a punishment. And, of course, it allows Edward to be the great white savior to the yellow people, who are still making themselves sick by burying their dead right next to the river they use for drinking water.

I wouldn't go so far as to call The Painted Veil outright racist, but it is really goddamn ignorant and lazy when it comes to its' portrayal of Chinese people and culture. They're alternatively shown as superstitious and unreasonably violent, where Edward Norton's whiskey-sotten and bull-headed character is shown a heroic because he manages to determine that Naomi Watts is a hot piece of trim that's worth tapping, shortly before -- oh, snap! -- he gets cholera himself. Somebody get me a hanky -- I'm crying my eyes out over here.

Again, I'm certain that someone like me is not in the target demographic for a picture like The Painted Veil, but I think there are much better things you can do with two hours of your life rather than watching this movie. Serving meals to the homeless. Studying classic philosophical texts. Sending random semi-stalkerish messages on Facebook to your exes. Pretty much anything would be a more constructive use of your time than wasting it with a viewing of this slice of colonial pseudo-propaganda disguised as a love story.

After killing the notorious Pai Mei (Lo Lieh), Hung (Gordon Liu) returns to his village and seems to be ready to finally settle down and marry. But the White Lotus won't let him go so easily. Led by the Chief (also played by Lo Lieh), the clan attacks the village and kills everyone except for Hung and Mei (Kara Hui).

Of course, Hung swears revenge and sets off to kill the Chief. However, Hung's kung fu is not good enough, and he is defeated. Downtrodden, Hung begins to study various forms of kung fu in the hope of finding one which can stop the Chief.

Like I said, the plot ain't exactly Vonnegut material here. The actors try and salvage what they can out of the exposition scenes, but they are hampered by a half-ass scripting attempt that relies way too much on comedy, especially at times in the film when tension should be building. In particular, the whole bit where Hung learns a feminine style of kung fu is just painfully unfunny and goes on for way too long.

But you can throw most of that sort of stuff aside if you're a fighting fan. The brawls in Clan of the White Lotus are top-notch. They're not the best that the Shaw Brothers studio produced, but given the fact that this was made at a time when both the studio and old-school martial arts movies in general were in a bit of a downward spiral, one has to think that the film-makers did the best with what little resources they had to work with.

Perhaps because of those budgetary restrictions, there's not a whole lot of variety in the combatants; the vast majority of the fight time centers on Gordon Liu and Lo Lieh. That turns out to not be a bad thing at all, since they're two of the top movie martial artists, and make each of their clashes seem fresh.

Despite the strength of the action sequences, at the end of the day, this reviewer feels that Clan of the White Lotus is a bit over-rated. The exposition scenes really drag down the momentum the fights create. Nevertheless, it's a very good old-school flick that should definitely satisfy fans of the genre.

The plot basically re-treads the first film. The Japanese, led by the insidious Miyamoto (Lo Lieh, who must have been hard up for beer money to be forced into taking a role in rubbish such as this) are trying to kill the spirit of the occupied Chinese by destroying their kung fu schools. Chen Shan (Bruce Li) heads to Shanghai to check out his brother's grave, sees what the "nasty Japs" are up to, and proceeds to kick their asses into submission.

I'm not a big fan of the first movie, and its' sequel does nothing to improve on it. In fact, as you might expect, given that the first entry's main draw (Bruce Lee, natch) isn't here, things become worse. Bruce Li is a decent actor and martial artist, but he's not given a chance to display either of those skills here.

The film-makers were obviously trying to make him into Bruce Lee v. 2, but it doesn't work. There's one scene where Li does his best Bruce Lee imitation of The Dragon's legendary nunchaku skills. Instead of exciting, it comes off as cheesy and hollow, and is a perfect example of why this should be left in the bargain bin and not put in your DVD player.