This film is best for its historical importance. This is what is considered the first martial arts hit. The film is pretty dry once you get past its historical importance.Lo Lieh stars as a martial arts students who is training for a tournament. His new teacher teaches him an unbeatable style called Iron Fist. Whenever he uses Iron Fist his hands glow red; the parts where this happen are always cool. With this style he wins the tournament and beats up some thugs.The film uses trampolines heavily. The choreography is good, but like i said earlier it really falls short of some of the later masterpieces.

Hong Kong filmmaker Chang Chang Ho's 1972 martial arts movie epic "Five Fingers of Death" is widely considered by a great many film experts and kung-fu movie fanatics to be the martial arts movie that started it all.Being released in 1972, it was phase-two of the three-step process that would lead to the explosion of martial arts movies in the West - "Billy Jack" (1971), with its famous Hapkido showdown in the park, was released the year before, and Bruce Lee starred in "Enter the Dragon" (1973) two years later, thereby solidifying martial arts movies' place in Western cinema.But what is all the hoopla about regarding "Five Fingers of Death"? The movie, with its terrible dubbing, explosive (if not highly improbable) action sequences and technical flaws and all, has a plot, albeit a very thin one. Chih-Hao (the late Lo Lieh) is a young and dedicated student of Chinese gong-fu who is selected to represent his school in an upcoming martial arts tournament. His teacher offers to allow him to self-train in the "Iron Fist" style of fighting, a style so deadly that it could very easily kill a man with only one blow.Additionally, Chih-Hao's arrival at the school coincides with a violent conflict with a rival school, its students, and a trio of murderous heavy hitters from Japan. Before you know it, a major setback threatens Chih-Hao's training, and his ability to represent his beloved school in the upcoming tournament.Let me just say that "Five Fingers of Death" is in fact the movie that started it all. As another viewer mentioned, "Five Fingers of Death" helped to set a lot of standards in martial arts movies over the next three decades - Asian, European, and North American martial arts movies. Such standards include the dedicated student, the learning of patience and endurance, conflicts between rival schools, the intense ethnic animosity between the Chinese and Japanese, and learning a system of fighting for that good old-fashioned action movie motive: revenge. "Five Fingers of Death" would also serve as a major influence on American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies (Tarantino borrows quite liberally from this project, among many others, just so you know).The acting is pretty good, considering the fact that this is a martial arts movie from the early 1970s, the best of which is Lo Lieh. As the atypical student of the martial arts, his performance is quite groundbreaking, though upon first glance at this movie you wouldn't really know it because of how that particular character arc has been done to death so many times over the years. He's quite humble in his acting, doing anything he can to persevere over his enemies and not fight them in anger or stoop to their level of stupidity or arrogance. Also, when he suffers his major setback, it does make your heart sink a little bit because it's so brutal and you wonder if he's going to recover enough to realize his life-long ambition."Five Fingers of Death" is a classic in every sense. It's by no means perfect, and viewers would be crazy to expect something on the caliber of the "Godfather" of martial arts movies. What it does offer you is the ultimate example of Eastern hand-to-hand combat from the time before Eastern cinema was a major fixture in the West.7/10P.S.: "Enter the Dragon" Bolo Yeung also appears as the Mongolian street fighter near the beginning of the film.

The first major martial arts import into states. Yep, before Bruce Lee's "Fist of Fury". Credit goes to Wang Yu's "Chinese Boxer" which started the trend of story-driven kung fu films. This, only coming two years later retains almost the same structure as that film, minus Jimmy himself. There's a lot more emphasis on building a story here than on the actual fights and it's understandable how that might dissatisfy most viewers who expect a martial art film similar to Wang Yu's "One-Armed Boxer" films which reverse that emphasis. Not a bad film as an addition to Shaw Bros. filmography, it certainly opened up new 'frontiers' for other films to come in terms of some of the new techniques, but as an entertaining martial arts film I would go for something a little more "kung phooey", like Wang Yu's "One-Armed Boxer" films.

Well as a life long fan of Kung Fu films I have to say this is one of the best I have ever seen. Sure there is nothing special about the plot but man does it entertain. As does most movies of the genre. This film is packed with action and does not boar its viewers. It's so damn fun when I watch I have a smile on my face the whole time. This also has an impact on future films like Kill Bill. (Many of Kill Bill's Sound effects come from this film for example.) This is essential viewing for all knew viewers in Kung Fu. Form open to close this film is filled with fights that really are some of the better I have seen in the genre. There are few Kung Fu films out there that measure up to the sheer magic and entertainment of this film. So if in search of a Great Kung Fu movie check this one out for sure.