It starts with Chen Kuan-Tai, in a glorious 1970s style suit, takes out six would-be muggers. The police are after him for a payoff so he hides in the brothel. Other main characters include Ku Feng as the Chinese army general and Fan Mei-Sheng as the escort company man looking for one last glory run.
In one word the problem with this movie is "guns". Guns are a poor fit in martial arts movies for obvious reasons. There are limited options to negate the "instant death at a distance" problem that guns create. This movie quickly uses up all the options. This includes such set ups as: the first three shots always miss, the dagger hits first, or using another man or a dead body as a shield. There is even a scene where the guys say they don't want to use guns because that's unfair. (In real life that has never happened.) After all the excuses, the bullets just have to keep missing and missing. Many times the soldiers used the rifles as if they were just sticks.
This is a Shaw Brothers movie and almost all of these are available in excellent video quality today. My copy is English dubbed by the "A team" of voice over people. I prefer the subtitled versions of these movies because sometimes a bit of the video is missing with the translation. Nevertheless, the copy I have has an 81 minute run time which appears correct.
I first watched this movie back in 2015 but did not write a review at the time. My notes back then put it on my list to watch again sometime as appropriate and today was appropriate. I am sure all fans of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984 have this movie on their list so my recommendation is meaningless. I only rate it as average for the year and genre. The fights are just not that special and the story failed to hold my attention at times.
In one word the problem with this movie is "guns". Guns are a poor fit in martial arts movies for obvious reasons. There are limited options to negate the "instant death at a distance" problem that guns create. This movie quickly uses up all the options. This includes such set ups as: the first three shots always miss, the dagger hits first, or using another man or a dead body as a shield. There is even a scene where the guys say they don't want to use guns because that's unfair. (In real life that has never happened.) After all the excuses, the bullets just have to keep missing and missing. Many times the soldiers used the rifles as if they were just sticks.
This is a Shaw Brothers movie and almost all of these are available in excellent video quality today. My copy is English dubbed by the "A team" of voice over people. I prefer the subtitled versions of these movies because sometimes a bit of the video is missing with the translation. Nevertheless, the copy I have has an 81 minute run time which appears correct.
I first watched this movie back in 2015 but did not write a review at the time. My notes back then put it on my list to watch again sometime as appropriate and today was appropriate. I am sure all fans of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984 have this movie on their list so my recommendation is meaningless. I only rate it as average for the year and genre. The fights are just not that special and the story failed to hold my attention at times.