 |  |  |  |  A nice old school flick featuring lots of great kicking from Hwang Jang Lee (who also directed the movie). The film has a great opening sequence where Hwang takes out several combatants which is easily worth the price of admission. The plot is a typical revenge scenario, and includes other recurring themes of the genre: drunken old bum kung fu master, rag tag bunch of orphans, competing rice factories, Tito Wong, rape scene, drownings, training sequences, monks, Shaolin Temple... The cool thing is that Hwang plays a good guy and has no mustache. Recommended. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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| Hwang Jang Lee as a good guy? Well, okay, I'll try anything once. Seriously though, this is a pretty enjoyable flick. It is just a little weird seeing ol' Hwang smiling and being nice to people, after watching him beating the snot out of the good guys for I don't know how many movies. At least that was my initial reaction, when watching this for the first time, many moons ago.
Thankfully he is so nice to the bad guys, or this would have been a pretty dull affair. Also, when said bad guys are Tino Wong and Eddie Ko, you know you're in for some grade A ass-whoopin'. Hwang breaks out his deadly arsenal of kicks, does some imressive hand to hand, and gets to showcase his badass stick fighting skills as well. Watch out for three different variations of his infamous flying triple kick, one of them hitting three guys before he lands--now THAT is hardcore. The end fight against Eddie Ko is also pretty damn sweet. Sticks, kicks and shapes, what more do you need?
For what must have been a relatively low budget Korean film, the production value was not too bad. Decent costumes, nice locations, and I even noticed that some of the street scenes seemed to have been shot on an interior set.
Personally I like ole' master Hwang better as a badass villain. But I can understand and appreciate that when shooting movies in his native Korea, he wanted to try on some good guy roles like this and flicks like HARD BASTARD and BUDDHIST FIST AND TIGER CLAWS. It must get tedious to play the evil bastard every time, he just does so well. Buddha bless you Master Hwang, whereever you are. |
| | AGREE? | READER COMMENTS | AUTHOR | | Y | | JV47842 | | Y | Excellent points made as always. I think I gave it a four star rating when I reviewed it but I still agree with everything stated. | Bastard Ronin |
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 |  |  |  |  This was a surprisingly good movie. I loved the story, fight scenes and the villain.
I didn't think much of it from the title, but it had a great ending. I give this movie 4 stars. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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 |  |  |  |  This one is very difficult to review. On the positive side, Hwang Jang Lee, Eddie Ko and Fan Mei San are terrific. On the negative side is the awful unfunny comedy throughout the first half of this movie and the annoying character known as Ah-Choo. I was actually overjoyed when they killed his character off. The real shame is that the action is very good but the comedy really drags this down. I recommend this movie, but there are parts that will make you want to hit the fast forward button. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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 |  |  |  |  This is a cool kung fu movie. Lots of killer fights and super kicking from Hwang Jang Lee. And a rare chance to see Hwang as the protagonist. A cool stickfight in the end. Leg-man Hwang looks like he was born with a stick in his hands. | | LOG IN TO COMMENT ON THIS REVIEW! |
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