I finally had the pleasure to watch this masterpiece last night. It is the movie I always wanted to make, to see, to watch. It is one of these many Chinese movies Quentin Tarantino must have watched and always strived to recreate their amazingness! But he only came close; never was able to 100 % capture the magic. This movie has it all: Amazing Kung Fu - or to be more precise - Wuxia action, great dubbing with extremely serious lines like: "You're the only one, 'til now, who could hurt me." The cinematography is great, real landscapes, professional "wire-fu" stunts, perfect sound- editing, magic hand grenades, drama... Simply put: The perfect movie. But what makes it go to eleven on a rating system from one to ten is the unique combination of Chinese action and actors with American dubbing and western soundtracks. There's music from Ennio Morricone and Jean Michelle Jarre in this one! Many years, before Tarantino came along and did the same thing (combining eastern and western) It's so bad, it's good. And it's so good in it's bad-good way that it's perfect. When movies are about entertainment, this one wins the universe! There's not enough motion picture awards in all of existence to praise Xia gu rou qing chi xi zin enough. Wow, just wow. This movie is like one of these things you were looking for since the day you were born - but did not know; so instead you tried to find movie-happiness in the IMDb Top 250 or wherever. I at least did. Until last night... when I finally found it. THAT is how good this movie is.

This movie with actors from Taiwan, Hongkong and China was one of my favourite movies when I was a little kid. I always liked Asian culture and watched a lot of kung fu flicks with my father. While other kids at elementary school watched Hollywood cinema or cartoons, I watched kung fu movies like this one. I remember that I watched this movie at least three times a year with a girlfriend of mine when I was young and we both enjoyed watching this. Lately, I rediscovered this movie and fell in love with it again.The story is quite simple. Our main hero helps to hang a villain for his kingdom and the father of the deceased swears revenge and kills the entire family of our main hero. Only his nephew survives in a well after a bloody massacre. The main hero swears revenge and wants to know who is responsible for the bloodbath. He quits his job and leaves his kingdom to seek for justice. But his counterpart sets a prime on his head and the main hero has to face many fighters that hope to kill him and get rich and famous. On his way, he must struggle with many enemies and traps as well as with his young and stubborn nephew that follows him everywhere until he meets with his final adversary.The movie has many strong points. The fighting scenes and the choreographic work are outstanding and many gifted actors are featured on this film. Sometimes, a few fighting scenes are a little bit exaggerated and artificially flavoured but this is nothing unusual to the genre.The acting is also very well done and features many very cool characters as the ice cold main hero and his courageous young nephew. On the other side, you have an intriguing mysterious man in black and a young and naive fighter and his beautiful girlfriend that try to kill the main hero. The movie is always entertaining and contains not a single minute of boredom.In comparison to some other critics, I really liked the score of this film. It features traditional Chinese folk music, electronic pop music and some parts of scores coming from different famous series and movies (for example: Once upon a time in the West). The music always fits in a very harmonic way to the different scenes and characters.The only negative points I might cite in this movie are some exaggerated fight scenes where people are flying across a sea or through trees and some scenes where people in black fight in a dark alley on a moonless night and where you can only guess what really happens. Sometimes, there are also some characters that appear and fight with the main hero for no apparent reason, for example before the final battle scene. But all these points do no harm to this highly addictive flick that any fan of Chinese culture and tradition and kung fu must see. The movie is hard to find but definitely worth your money and attention if you can get your hands on it.

A cheap but stylish attempt to bring some of the world of the Japanese Lone Wolf & Cub series into the kung fu genre. After a confusingly edited opening sequence our hero, a government officer, who has just killed a criminal discovers his brother's family and his mother killed in revenge by the criminal's father, an evil warlord. The hero finds a lone survivor, his nephew. He tries to leave the child with foster parents but the kid keeps escaping and following his uncle. The officer relents and let's the child accompany him on his quest to bring the warlord to justice. The warlord hires legions of assassins to kill the officer and the boy. But this officer is an unstoppable force of kung fu fury.The similarities to the Lone Wolf series are abundant. The officer wears a similar outfit to the Lone Wolf and instead of a baby cart the officer pulls the child in a wagon. The assassins are very quirky especially one creepy guy who dresses in black and can cut down trees with a hidden blade. There's a nod to the Zatoichi series when the officer gets a special weapon to deal with the creepy guy. The martial arts are good to excellent but the wire work is very primitive. A few of the effects are ridiculous especially the scene with the attack eagle. The film has a melodramatic subplot concerning a would-be assassin and his bride to be which works. The music track is probably all stolen.Very well filmed and quite entertaining. There's enough plot and character work to make it stand out from the standard kung fu flick. The story is a little lumpy and the final fights are not up to the standard set earlier in the film but the story is still moving. There a fleeting bit of female nudity at the very beginning and none after.While thankfully in widescreen, the print presently available seems to have been cropped anyway. Probably to remove the Cantonese subtitles which were frequently put in every print of low budget Taiwanese and HK Mandarin films. I look forward to a subtitled version of this film.

This is a slightly confusing movie due to some moderately bad dubbing (some of which provides (un?)intentional laughs) and also due to several dark scenes where everyone seems to be wearing black on a black street on a moonless night, and I don't know much about actors etc in fu flicks so I thought I'd just give a general breakdown of the movie's plot.The opening scenes feature several people being killed in a dark room while other, so far nameless men, sit and make important looking gestures. This is followed by an execution, followed by one of the executioners (We'll call him "The Hero") finding his family slain, which sets up the expected vow of revenge theme common to the genre. Finding his Nephew alive and stuck in a nearby well he uses the child to set a trap for the killers, whom he trounces with ease. He then sets off to find whoever paid them, after resigning his "post" (no idea what his post was). Leaving the child with "Uncle Ko", he stomps off to the home of his family's killers, where he continues to beat the snot out of anyone in his way. Finding that this is just a middle-man in the plot against him, he gets the name of the next guy he has to track down. By this point his nephew has escaped and tracks him down to join him in his quest.Then some more people are killed in a dark set on a dark night in a dark.. you get the idea.. A 1000 gold tael reward is offered for the killers death (it's blamed on our Hero) and he's soon attacked several times by some humorous looking assailants and some unconventional weapons (the cliché black and white fighting team, the people with 3 shot arrow guns). The child is attacked and rescued by a nameless "Man in Black" (our Hero wears all white, of course) during the course of the hero's butt-whupping. A third man (we'll call him Guy #3) hears about the reward and rushes off to tell a lady with a big head that he will give her the reward in return for her daughter's hand in marriage. This is exceedingly stupid, as she just wanted 20 taels of silver. Oh well.. We find that he is master of the "Thunder Palm", which should be called "Throwing Grenades", as that's what he actually does. I have to mention that at this point there's a good 5 minutes of melodrama featuring, i kid you not, the score from "The young and the Restless" (or the hulk or some other sappy 70's music.. it's horrible..) i was begging the movie to please stop and was relieved when the scene ended.. only to find myself watching naked Chinese kids jumping around in a stream IN SLOW MOTION (eye roll.. fast forward fast forward)..The music gets crazy like something off hearts of space (laser blasts, ambient rhythm's, etc) as the Man in Black approaches the Hero. They fight, but are an even match, and the Man in Black walks off calmly (to the tune of more laser blasts, etc). The Man in Black is then told to kill both the hero and the child, but he runs into Guy #3 first instead. Both wanting the reward money they (of course) start fighting (in a dark room etc). It's a shame the picture is so dark, as these are both very talented actors/fighters.. Guy #3 then throws his trademark thunder palm grenades but fails to kill him (I think.. it's too dark to tell what's going on.. someone laughs ominously afterwords, so it's anyone's guess what happened).Guy #3 and the Hero then fight, with the Hero emerging victorious and another dramatic scene and MORE BAD 70'S MUSIC (ARRRGG..). Maiming Guy #3, the Hero and his Nephew start again on their journey to wherever they're going, leaving Guy #3 and his potential bride to be to wax poignant to the same ***** frigging **** music (fast forward fast forward).. The Man in Black informs Guy #3 that he must still be killed for no real reason, which he promptly does, resulting in more music, blah blah blah. He then carries off the girl..The Man in Black attacks the Hero with some goofy sound effects and more space music, this time the Hero walking away as the Man in Black stumbles to the ground (and more space music). The Nephew is kidnapped during the action, and the Hero proceeds to the home of the person who set up the murders, where he is attacked by some birds who he not only kills, but somehow completely plucked with his sword. Surrounded by archers, he proceeds to throw their arrows back at them, killing several, and attacks his Nephews' kidnapper as an all out mêlée ensues.The Hero is blindfolded, tied up, and hung from a tree, and then told that his blood will be drank and his flesh eaten, and he is tortured for a bit before the girl shows up and starts lobbing hand grenades at his captor just before being killed herself.. This sets us up for the climactic final battle.. Who wins? Watch the movie and find out ;) My rating: 5 out of 10 due to half the fights being to dark to see and the horrible horrible music.. otherwise I'd have given it a 7. It has a few cheesy scenes, but not enough for it to be a joke, and the fighting we do see is well done for the most part.Gore rating: 4 out of 10 for some fingers being cut off, heads rolling, blood, etc.There are better fu flicks out there, but then again, there are a LOT worse..