The Buddhist Fist: Quick Takes

A zany cast of characters comes and goes in Yuen Woo-Ping's recognizable genre piece but outstanding kung-fu overall erases some of the pitfalls The Buddhist Fist experiences along the way. Starring Yuen-Shun-Yi as Ah Shang who searches for his missing godfather (Cheung Hei) but stumbles upon a stock plot, Yuen Woo-Ping had 4 seminal and extremely noteworthy films under his belt at this point. It's still the casting of Shun-Yi that prevents the film from reaching the heights Snake In The Eagle's Shadow and The Magnificent Butcher did. He is sincere and a likeable enough hero for the film (and less annoying compared to Dance Of The Drunk Mantis) but the film can't gain as much status in the light of Jackie and Sammo's presences in said films. It's perhaps a trifle unfair to compare but many other parts of The Buddhist Fist are hugely enjoyable despite. Your tolerance for mugging and low-brow comedy will be put to the test here and Yuen Woo-Ping for our pleasure populates the film with perverts, stuttering men with birdcages, police conducting animal court, pale faced hunchback assassins and more. All colliding quite jarringly with some slightly more serious tones later in the piece. It all foreshadows the full on insanity of The Miracle Fighters and Shaolin Drunkard and these are fun times to go along with the tragic ones.

As far as choreography goes, the Yuen's can't make all of the choreography within the skits work as smoothly as the subsequent Dreadnaught showed it can but largely Yuen Shun-Yi and Tsui Siu-Ming lead the frame with awesome skill. Performing the direction with the utmost clarity and speed, their double act is classic with a capital C and shows Yuen Woo-Ping's magic at its very best. Fan Mei-Sheng, Simon Yuen (in a variation of the Sleeping Wizard character Chin Yuet-Sang made popular in Last Hurrah For Chivalry), Peter Chan Lung, Yuen Cheung-Yan and Lee Hoi Sang also appear. Tai Seng's dvd includes multiple Chinese tracks and an English dub but omits any kind of subtitles.