Lei ru fung (1971) User Reviews

The clothes really do make the woman

[ckormos1 · 7/10 · 1 April 2019]

Lo Lieh is the Swift Knight and he has come for three things: rescue the girl, burn the IOUs, and 500 silver. He can be flexible about the silver. He gets what he came for then flies away.

This movie has a detailed story that is easy to follow as long as you don't blink. Really, every frame of the movie is significant so pay attention! This is also one of my favorite Lo Lieh as leading man movies. I just wish he had more fighting scenes though.

Minor characters in this type of movie are usually little more than walking and talking props. In this movie, particularly Fan Mei-Sheng and the cross-eyed actor, they are both entertaining and memorable.

This was the year Shaw Studio expanded by building many outdoor standing sets that would appear in movies to come. The seven story pagoda is in this movie. It is dressed up to look old and abandoned instead of built yesterday.

Fans of this genre are often wondering what movie they could present to newcomers. This is movie is certainly a possibility. A high video quality copy can be purchased and the runtime is only about 80 minutes. I rate it well above average for the year and genre.

Lo Lieh labyrinth...

[poe426 · 6/10 · 19 February 2013]

THE SWIFT KNIGHT is another tale of political intrigue (yawn) that involves a Princess-in-hiding and her little "brother" (who is clearly female). She's hiding in a brothel, of all places, and is in the process of being bought by THE SWIFT KNIGHT himself, a sneak thief who wears a mask, Lei (Lo Lieh), when a mysterious beggar enters the picture; he, too, it seems, wants ownership of the pair (the Princess and her "brother"). Meanwhile, the Evil Prince seeking to regain his power sends "Zhu Pao from Hell" to nab the two. When Pao kills an envoy and impersonates him, Lei must contrive to save the only person who can identify Pao as a villain- a constable. To save said constable, Lei breaks into prison and frees everybody. This leads to a chase, a cave, and a final confrontation in which Lei literally drops down out of the sky in quintessential deus ex machina fashion to prevent the Princess and her brother from being beheaded. This one has more twists and turns than a blind man feeling his way through a maze. Typical politics...

THE SWIFT KNIGHT – Fanciful Shaw Bros. swordplay tale

[BrianDanaCamp · 10 July 2010]

THE SWIFT KNIGHT (1971) is an enjoyable old-fashioned swordplay adventure about dashing heroes, scowling villains and a pining damsel-in-distress. The plot takes at least 40 minutes (half the running time) to kick in as various characters converge on a remote town to find a particular teenage girl and her adolescent brother, whom we eventually learn are the only children of the dying Emperor, born to a palace maid who was cast out of the court. Various court figures are out to find them, either to restore them to the palace or to kill them so that the dastardly Prince Jie (Tung Lin) can ascend to the throne. Zhu Pao (Wang Hsieh), a henchman of Prince Jie, kills the Imperial envoy and takes his place. An officer disguised as a beggar (Chin Han) is a key figure although it takes a while before we learn his motive. A sharp-eyed constable (Fan Mei-sheng) recognizes the real villain and is thrown in prison as a result, but is later rescued and becomes an ally of the heroes.

A masked hero known as the Swift Knight (Lo Lieh) intervenes at key points, motivated only by a sense of justice. The unwitting Princess (Margaret Hsing Hui) is a passive figure in all of this and is constantly being taken by one party or another. Eventually she falls in love with her chief rescuer, but destiny awaits. Her eager-to-help brother is played by an eleven-year-old actress, Niu Niu, who excelled as a heroine years later in BRAVE ARCHER 2 & 3 and SWIFT SWORD.

It gets silly at times, especially when the heroes are confronted by imposing odds and manage to defeat them far too easily or when characters "fly" effortlessly back and forth in pursuit of each other. But there's plenty of action and movement, well-designed studio sets, and picturesque location work. It moves swiftly for the most part, except for inevitable moments of exposition, when unimportant details are explained for us. But the whole thing is only 80 minutes so there aren't many of those.

The film was directed by Korean transplant Cheng Chang-ho, who gave us KING BOXER the following year, a film that would go on to introduce the kung fu movie to the U.S. under the title FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH. That film's star, Lo Lieh, makes a suitably agile hero in this one as the Swift Knight, who wears a mask at night when he invades brothels to free imprisoned girls and magistrates' headquarters in search of ill-gotten treasures. Chin Han, normally a star of dramas and romances (MY DREAM BOAT), plays Liu, the court officer masquerading as a beggar. Wang Hsieh, a frequent Shaw Bros. villain, does a fine job as the formidable Zhu Pao. Also on hand are other Shaw Bros. regulars, including Fang Mien, Ouyang Shafei, Ling Ling, Chan Shen, and Huang Tsung-shun.

The music score consists almost entirely of cues ripped off from James Bond movies, most notably "From Russia with Love."