Vengeance! (1970) User Reviews

Revenge served HOT

[qatmom · 7/10 · 10 December 2005]

I can understand younger brother's distress at the loss of older brother by way of murder, but it was almost impossible to keep track of all the bodies that piled up on the way towards killing the parties responsible.

So many goons biting the dust, their only crime choosing the wrong guy for whom to be a goon. Is there a Goon's Widows & Orphans Society? I hope there is.

This is not to say I disliked the movie, far from it. It is very dark, certainly not something to see on a down day. I had a pretty good idea how things would end, given that every David Chiang movie I've watched recently his characters croak, but they take a LOT of killing from a lot of bad guys before they actually die.

Blood flows, spurts, seeps through clothing, furniture is broken, bad guys get zorched [& they don't always see it coming -- are they ever surprised!], guys crash through railings--it's all there.

Top tier revenge film

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 8/10 · 15 January 2023]

Vengeance gets off to a bloody, visceral, frantic, and amazing start. The way it cuts between the stage show and the violent fight scenes - just great, effective editing. And I also loved how cold and brutal the main character was straight away, when his quest for vegetable began. Plus a lot of the fight scenes are shot in a very intimate, in your face kind of way, and it made the already quite gory action have even more of an impact.

Things slow down in parts of the second act, as they often do. I also wasn't really sure about the romance aspects of this movie, and didn't really feel it, but at least it's brief.

But what matters most is that the main premise, while simple, is executed fantastically. David Chiang is also great in the lead role (he might be becoming my favourite of the regular Shaw Brothers actors) and the action - much of its relegated to the opening scenes and climax - satisfies. It's in the upper echelon when it comes to classic martial arts movies; that's for sure.

VENGEANCE - Noirish Hong Kong thriller with kung fu stars

[BrianDanaCamp · 8 September 2001]

VENGEANCE (aka KUNG FU VENGEANCE, 1970) was one of the earliest collaborative efforts of director Chang Cheh and his star team of David Chiang and Ti Lung. It is more of a traditional gangster film than a kung fu film and offers a dark, atmospheric feel closer to Hollywood film noir than to similarly themed Hong Kong crime films. The film is, in fact, a loose remake of John Boorman's crime thriller POINT BLANK (1967), itself an adaptation of Richard Stark's novel, 'The Hunter.'

In 1920s-era Peking, Chinese Opera performer Ti Lung confronts his boss (Ku Feng) over the boss's attentions to his straying wife and takes on a room full of hatchet-wielding henchmen before dying a bloody death after a valiant fight. As Ti's brother, David Chiang, who shares no scenes with his frequent co-star (other than a brief flashback), comes to town seeking revenge and eventually fights it out with all the crime bosses and their minions, culminating in a big fight in which David helps one gang beat another only to have the winning gang turn on him. Although the film is generally slow-moving, it has a number of compelling scenes and expert use of cramped interiors in well-designed period settings.

The film has little in the way of actual kung fu, with more of an emphasis on knife fighting, slashing and judo flips in its three major fight scenes than on hand-to-hand Chinese boxing, yet it is clearly a lead-in to subsequent gangster-style kung fu films by Chang Cheh such as DUEL OF THE IRON FIST, which also starred David Chiang and Ti Lung, and BOXER FROM SHANTUNG, which starred Chen Kuan Tai, who appears in a bit part in VENGEANCE.

Shaw Brothers Classics: Vengeance!

[Captain_Couth · 9/10 · 17 August 2005]

Vengeance (1970) is a hardcore action film starring David Chiang and Lung Ti. Lung appears in the first act of the film. He's a Peking Opera performer who's sick and tired of all of the corruption going on in town. He confronts the local crime boss but get's nowhere. The boss goes out and has his goon murder Lung. Days later, his crazy brother (David Chiang) comes into town. All he wants to do is find out who killed his brother. Whenever he's unsatisfied with the answers the locals give him or if they question him back, he just breaks limbs or kills them on the spot. Feed up with the non-compliance with the gangsters, David decides to crush them with his superb fighting skills.

Pimped out in a white suit, David storms the bosses hide out and slaughters his way until he meets the boss. Being a boss for so long, he shows David why and delivers some blood letting punishment. After giving him all he could handle, the boss gloats over David's propped up body. This gives ample time for David to give the dumb boss a first hand demonstration of his "quart of blood" technique. With his last bit of energy, David dies in dramatic fashion in front of a local girl who was falling him. Now his brother can rest....and so can he!!

An awesome action film that was heavily copied in John Woo's THE KILLER. Man, he sure loved to copy a lot of great scenes from the Shaw Brothers movies he worked on. If you loved blood soaked action with loads of dead bodies and bone crunching action, then you don't want to miss Vengeance! Make sure you watch the restored Celestial Pictures version. Not only is it in the original language but it's in beautiful Shawscope!

Highly recommended.

Early classic from the triumvirate of Chiang, Lung, and Cheh

[Leofwine_draca · 10/10 · 27 November 2016]

This excellent revenge-themed Shaw Brothers epic is the kind of film they did so well. My favourite Chinese director, Chang Cheh, is on hand to choreograph the mayhem in this brutal tale of bloodshed and murder, set in 1920s Peking. In many ways this is a familiar film; we saw almost exactly the same type of antics in the later BOXER FROM SHANTUNG, but that doesn't stop this being thrilling.

The film is headlined by two leading action stars of the day, David Chiang and Ti Lung. Lung has a small role here, playing a guy who falls foul of some gangster types and finds himself murdered in a particularly vicious fashion. His brother is Chiang, who isn't about to let things rest. As usual, our hero finds himself working his way through the enemy, starting off with lowly henchmen before facing the inner circle of tough crime bosses and a sniper thrown into the mix too.

There isn't a slow moment in this movie, which really focuses on the lean, mean storyline. The cast are excellent: the bad guys slimy, the good guys stoic and stony-faced. Chiang has never been more stylish and stone-faced than he is here. The various chase and action sequences are all expertly staged, with a highlight being some fighting amid the high balconies above a theatre performance. Inevitably the movie is book-ended by a couple of huge one-vs-many fights, with the outcome pretty much inevitable in both; still, these are without a doubt the finest moments of the film and I'll never get tired of watching this sort of mayhem. A real classic, this.

Out for Vengeance!

[poe426 · 9/10 · 27 February 2015]

VENGEANCE!, one of director Chang Cheh's earliest gangster movies, features two of his protégés, Ti Lung and David Chiang, as a pair of brothers who both happen to be Chinese opera stars. Ti Lung performs in a troupe headed by the unscrupulous Ku Feng, who lusts after Lung's wife. While SHE doesn't seem to mind the attention, Lung DOES and lets his Boss know it. This turns out to be a fatal mistake: Feng makes nefarious plans with the other members of his gang and Lung's character is murdered (in a particularly brutal way, too: his eyes are gouged out before he's finished off). Enter his brother, played by David Chiang. He has only one thing on his mind: VENGEANCE! And he gets it, too, decimating the Bad Guys in bloodthirsty fashion. He finds time between killings to fall for a young lady, but nothing can stand in the way of his VENGEANCE! Superbly directed (as usual), VENGEANCE! is worth a look for Chang Cheh, Ti Lung or David Chiang fans- or fans of gangster cinema.

horrible screenplay, scenario, plot, lousy directing and acting

[rightwingisevil · 28 September 2012]

if compares SB's martial arts films with the Japanese samurai films, the SB's films and all the other similar genre films produced by other HK movies companies were nothing but child's play and big laugh. everything was shot indoor with artificial lighting, all the actors got so many shadows in 360 degrees on the ground. the screenplays usually were ridiculous, no specific time frame or historical supporting facts. actors wore funny costumes, modern hairdos, funny make-up. all the fighting scenes were played out like ballet, just looked so phony and at the same time, so childish. acting were non-exist since everybody was just acting. the ridiculous screenplays screwed up every possibility that could make a memorable film. there's no art value whatsoever in them, just laughable child play.

in this film, the brother who seek revenge for his brother was a willowy young actor, wearing oiled modern hairdo and most ridiculous of all, wore custom tailored white suit, while all the other goofballs wore some traditional clothes, all the bad guys never wore their shirts buttoned up. the performances of all the actors in this film were so poor and so unreal further ruined by horrible dialog. the fighting scenes were all looked so heavily staged.

there was nothing worth recommendable in this film, just shameful and disgust feelings. horrible yet at the same time, very laughable.

THE VERY FIRST KUNG-FU MOVIE!!!

[[e-mail] · 9/10 · 1 January 2021]

Martial Arts cinema borned in Shanghai during the silent movies of the 1920's, then reborn in Hong Kong 1949 with the Wong Fei Hung series, but Kung-Fu movies as we knows them, borned again in Hong Kong 5/14/1970 with this masterpiece by the chinese Sergio Leone, film-director Chang Cheh (even if Wang Yu's The Chinese Boxer/Hammer of God is usually regarded the very first classic, because it was HK no.1 top-grossing film of the same year). Actually The Chinese Boxer was released 6 months later this The Duel, so in terms of chronology and quality The Duel is the very first Kung-Fu classic, even if didn't gross enormous money in his homeland (more or less 700.000 HK dollars). An early effort by the Chang Cheh's created duo David Chiang-Ti Lung, BAO CHOU (transl. Veangeance) put on the map the revenge obsession as the main theme of the genre. The revenge-driven David Chiang plays the brother of the murdered Opera-actor Ti Lung, so the vengeance becomes a value that director Chang Cheh dosen't even question about: it's a sacred duty that leads to a final bloodbath where everybody dies in a ferocious way. Top-notch tech-values and an outstanding coreography (courtesy by Tong Kai and Yuen Cheung Yan) add immensely. Of course you must consider it was made 50 years ago, so if you like Martial Arts in CGI stay at large from this masterpiece that has a lost craftsmanship. It's a gangsters-movie influenced by italian spaghetti-western. The brilliant camerawork in the overcrowded set where more than fifty stuntmen are jumping and fighting during the final battle, the perfect continuity among cuts and the deadly grace David Chiang displays, are just some of the gems. Blink and you miss future star Bruce Leung Siu Lung as one of the henchmen. The Kung-F cinema borned here.