Cheng Pei Pei, best known to western audiences as Jade Fox from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," is absolutely beautiful in this movie and puts in a great performance as the film's main protagonist, Golden Swallow. Drunken Cat is another entertaining character, though the actor who portrayed him didn't seem very drunk at all. The film's music is also memorable, and is likely to get stuck in the head of the viewer for the rest of the day after watching it.

Though the film is very important, it doesn't quite hold up after forty years, which is what kept it from recieving a perfect score. It is still entertaining, but some viewers of newer martial arts and wuxia may feel disappointed with the slow action of this classic.

It's not a flawless movie, but the flaws within the movie aren't nearly large enough to discredit this movie's reputation as one of the greatest martial arts films ever created. Fu Sheng's acting in particular is over the top, but it works for his character. The main distractions are the props and sets, which are a bit tacky at times.

Other than those issues, "The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter" has "classic" written all over it. The story is deep and involving, and the action is on par with the best of Lau Kar Leung's films. The three-section closing fight scene is a real treat.

Viewers of "The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter" may recognize some of the musical cues that Quentin Tarantino used in "Kill Bill", including the horns that play when Beatrix meets her daughter for the first time in Vol. 2.