From my above summary line, you may have concluded that I do not like Hong Kong/Taiwanese kung fu movies. Actually, I really enjoy these movies... at least those made from the mid-1980s on. Efforts made in the 70s for the most part I must admit do not move me, including this one. It is a little better than average, thanks to not only some good looking sets and costumes, but also some skillful camera work and visual composition. But apart from that stuff, I was bored for the most part. The scenes involving kung fu are indistinguishable from the dreary kung fu you usually get in a 70s movie. The story is thin and curiously keeps the movie's heroine off of the screen for large chunks of time. You won't be missing much if you skip seeing this movie, and I can only recommend it for die hard fans of Angela Mao - and even they will find much of the movie dreary and boring.

Feisty ace martial artist Chu Siew Yen (a sound and commanding performance by the beautiful and charismatic Angela Mao; Bruce Lee's sister in "Enter the Dragon") promises her teacher that she will find his missing brother. During her search she also tries to find the person who killed her parents. Of course, accomplishing said tasks proves to be easier said than done as Chu faces opposition from many people while attempting to uncover the truth. Karl Liao's energetic direction maintains a snappy pace throughout and stages the plentiful chopsocky action with considerable rip-roaring brio. The slight and often jumbled plot is really nothing more than a flimsy excuse to show off Mao's incredibly agile, athletic, and exciting martial arts prowess. Fortunately, Mao more than holds her own as she takes on several folks all at once and manages to retain her poise and dignity as the story gets more increasingly silly and unintentionally funny (one gut-busting camp highlight has Mao fighting a bunch of women armed with deadly giant exploding flowers!). The handsome widescreen cinematography by Sun-po Li and Yung-hin Cheng boasts a sizable number of smooth gliding tracking shots and makes the most of the pretty rural scenery. Fu Liang Chou's rousing score also hits the stirring spot. The dubbing is really bad and thus adds to the picture's considerable kitschy charm. An entertainingly inane diversion.

"Moonlight Sword & Jade Lion" tells us about a young fighting lady, played by Angela Mao, who is on the search for an old master. Nobody has seen him for months, it appears, so she keeps asking people "have you seen him?" and sometimes she fights them if she doesn't like the reply. Now, the movie has a couple of memorable moments, such as the hilarious fight against roughly 20 enemies at once who are holding flowers (sic!) which can shoot flames or darts. That doesn't help to disguise the fact the story isn't exactly Sherlock Holmes. The heroine spends a month wandering around looking for clues, doesn't find anything important, and most characters just seem to be introduced to confuse her and the audience a bit. And if they do intend to tell her anything, they suddenly have a knife in their back. It was a relief to see in the other reviews that nobody else understood what the Jade Lion was for, either. So in the end, "Moonlight Sword & Jade Lion" is worth watching only for fans of Angela Mao who bravely carries on despite the lack of story progress.

'Moonlight Sword And Jade Lion' is one of my all time favorite movies.I think I like it because the main idea is Angela goes out on her own to find a friend of her father's and find out the truth about her parents' murder.A sub plot is this guy has one of a pair of jade lions and if he gets the other one he will become 'master of the Kung Fu world'. However it's not clear to me why.The sound on 'Moonlight Sword' is bad and it's in the wide screen format. On my TV this only uses about 50 percent of the available screen. I don't understand why people like this format.This was a different time in history where there was no mass communications. This guy wants to have a meeting with someone so he throws a knife at the guy's face and shouts "Get in touch with me.".There's also two guys who I think are twins (one the good guy and one the villain) and they kill people by throwing big knives into the back of their heads just when they are going to say something important."You don't understand. It wasn't our fault. We were under orders from .......UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !" To me the greatest scene is Angela gets surrounded by these gals who are carrying explosive flowers. She takes them all out with her telescopic spear.Then she goes into the 'temple of doom' that has various hazards such as flying saw blades.Jeff Marzano