Mr. Leung and his daughter run an escort company, and his team of fighters will guard and transport persons or cargo for the right price. During a Chinese holiday, the residents of a local village take part in the celebrations including Mr. Leung and his entourage. The festival is disrupted by students from the High Kick school, which is run by a rival of Mr. Leung named Chiu (Kwan Yung Moon). These student have no respect for the celebration and end up drawing Mr. Leung and his men into a major brawl. One of Mr. Leung's, followers, Wong Sheng (Yuen Moa), fights like a tiger, and sends the students scurrying back to their master, Chiu. The evil master has lost face because of the defeat of his top students in public, and he vows to get back at Mr. Leung. Chiu recruits the wiles of a corrupt official (Chan Lau) and they concoct a plan to ruin Mr. Leung. Having some political clout, the villains suggest Mr. Leung's escort company to transport the Emperor's gold bullion. With the approval of police Captain Yu, Mr. Leung's accepts the assignment and escorts the bullion across harsh terrain. Midway through the job, a group of masked assassins descend upon the escorts. Mr. Leung, Wong Sheng, and his men fight for their lives against the masked killers. During the battle, masks are ripped off and it is revealed that Chiu's students are the culprits. Soon, Chiu himself shows up to fight against the escorts. His boot is loaded with a blade, which he uses to slash Mr. Leung.

Word of the attack gets back to the authorities. Chiu arranges for the blame to be put on the shoulders of Captain Yu who vouched for the escorts. At Mr. Leung's place his daughter is distraught and Captain Yu tries to comfort her. Suddenly, her father stumbles in near death and reveals that no one survived the attack except himself. Then he places the blame on Chiu before dying. But Mr. Leung is wrong; he is not the only survivor. Wong Sheng is also alive, rescued by his brother Wong Lung (Hwang Jang Li). The two men plot the downfall of Chiu and his evil comrades. Meanwhile, Captain Yu goes to Chiu's house to arrest him. Captain Yu is overmatched by Chiu and his men, and they attack, capture, and torture him. Ms. Leung bribes a corrupt jailer to let her into the prison where Chiu keeps Captain Yu. She enters the cell to help Captain Yu, but the corrupt jailer returns with Chiu, who promptly beats and rapes her. She is constantly tortured until Chiu discovers she is pregnant with his child. Only then does he stop beating her because he wants to be a father. When the baby is finally born, Chiu discovers that his offspring is deformed from all the abuse heaped at its mother. Meanwhile, Wong Sheng invades the jailhouse to break Captain Yu out of prison. Wong Sheng successfully frees him, but the two must fight against impossible odds to escape. Both men are seriously wounded, yet manage to escape into the hills. Chiu comes up with a plan to flush out Captain Yu and his allies. He stages a public execution of Ms. Leung, for he knows the heroes will soon follow. Captain Yu, Wong Sheng, and Wong Lung, return to fight the forces of Chiu and his gang to the death....

FIVE FINGERS OF STEEL deserves credit for its semi-original plot and performances by the cast. Kwan Yung Moon is great as the villain and he has the most screen time. Equally entertaining is Chan Lau who plays the skinny, sneaky runt role that's quite common in these flicks. These two over power everyone else in the cast including the bland heroes, notwithstanding Hwang Jang Li. But even the bootmaster himself does not get much screen time. The script paints him as a character motivated by revenge, and shows him training (he uses his martial arts skills to uproot trees) throughout the movie. Then in a complete 100% turn from his motivation, his character flatly refuses to assist Wong Sheng and Captain Yu in the final battle. Ultimately, he joins his friends on the battlefield in a truly explosive climax. Hwang Jang Li only has about 10 spoken lines in the whole film. Director Leung Wing Shan tries to keep things fresh by showing portions of the movie as a flashback, to explain the dead body of Mrs. Leung's bastard child. This is where things become awfully surreal and bizarre. In one riotous scene when the deformed baby is born, the father Chiu is anxious to see his offspring. When he holds the baby and witnesses its distorted features, he flies into a rage and blames the mother—he doesn't understand that his own torturing and beating of Ms. Leung is what caused the infant's condition. The tone for these moments are dark, but unintentionally humorous in their outrageousness. Hwang Jang Li is also responsible for the film's fight choreography. He produces some great work here along the lines of the Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung stuff, very flashy with some decent weapons and footwork. Unfortunately, the filmmakers' felt that Li's fight execution wasn't fast enough, because they have the audacity to speed up each and every fight in the film. So all the combat scenes look superhumanly comical; this really ruins it for me and hurts the film itself. I can understand one or two overcranked scenes to heighten the impact of a fight, but each and every bit of action in a movie is ludicrous.

SIGHT
Director Leung Wing Shan filmed FIVE FINGERS OF STEEL in the aspect ratio of 2.35.1. Despite the ShawScope banner on the packaging, this ain't widescreen and this ain't even a Shaw Brothers picture. The fight choreography is capably preserved here, in all its over cranked glory. The full frame transfer utilized by PanMedia International for this DVD is clearly a dubious VHS source. There are many speckles, scratches, and other blemishes, and grain is prevalent throughout the picture. FIVE FINGERS OF STEEL is a very cheap motion picture shot on even cheaper film stock. PanMedia's print lacks depth and delineation. For instance in the background shots the people's faces lack clear features making it difficult to tell who is who. We also detected some pixelization (a DVD compression error). The black levels appear washed out. I will say that the color comes through nicely on this VHS looking transfer. This transfer, though lacking, does not sink to the level of PanMedia's worst stuff like THE KUNG FU INSTRUCTOR.

SOUND
PanMedia presents the movie in a four channel mono mix serves this movie well. When you load up the disc, a Dolby Digital 5.1 trailer appears with crystal clear sound, and true stereo music plays perfectly over the Main Menu. The movie itself is a surprisingly tight mono presentation with no pops, hiss, or other audio anomalies. There is even some bass on the mono soundtrack. The English dubbed dialog is clear and natural. The soundfield is ripe with mono martial arts intensity—you'll hear connecting kicks, flying leaps, clanging weapons, and even the rushing of air when someone ducks a swing. FIVE FINGERS OF STEEL features a pleasing original score, with only a few musical cues lifted from other movies. PanMedia's sound presentation is certainly superior to the video quality.

FEATURES
This is a PanMedia disc; there are no extras. However there are attractive menus, chapter selections, etc. Not all PanMedia DVDs even have these.

CONCLUSION
FIVE FINGERS OF STEEL is a must-see for Hwang Jang Li completists, as it's one of a tiny amount of films in which he plays the protagonist. It's very interesting to see him go against a fellow Korean with equal caliber skills (Kwan Yung Moon). The thing that ruined the movie for me is (but may not ruin it for you) is the overcranked fight scenes. I mean the whole movie is full of it. If the action had been in real-time, I would have been far more impressed with the choreography. PanMedia's transfer is certainly weak, but unlike the Shaw Bros. movies which will all be eventually be released with high quality transfers, I fear PanMedia's DVD may be the last word on this rarity.