ebiros2
This is an all star cast film with Wong Jin directing, so you can expect high caliber action, and production. It was probably the peak of silver age of Hong Kong cinema when this movie was made, and we see two gorgeous actresses Chingmy Yau, and Chun Man as the two lady leads, and Jet Li and Sammo Hung doing the male lead. The story is little contrived in the middle, but they save all the good actions until the end. Wong Jin's directing and production is good. There's always one more treat at each scene that makes watching this movie rewarding.I only wish that there are more actresses like Chingmy Yau these days, who are pretty and gorgeous at the same time. Jet Li saves all his talent until the very end. He was not so well known outside of Hong Kong back then. Sammo Hung is spot on as the master. All this makes this movie an entertaining piece.Good movie from the '90s that almost looks like it was made in the 21st century.
DrMongol
Jet Li's performance in this martial arts classic is superb. None of his other films come close to this. I was especially blown away by the incredible subtitles in this feature. I'm just so tired of bad dubbing...it's not that funny, leave it to mxc. The team-up of Jackie Chan with Chris Tucker was awesome. They have great chemistry together. Jackie's high-flying stunts combined with Tucker's urban lingo is perfect. I did not approve of Bruce Lee's cameo however. It's a slap in the face to feature him in a film in which he is not the main actor. I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel which is set for filming in July '04. I wish they made movies like this where I come from. It gets so darn lonely in my basement. Movies like this keep me from committing suicide.
ethanhill
Some of the comments I see disgust me. If you think this movie is horrible, you need to actually see some really bad movies before you waste everyone's time writing crap. If you see this, get the "Kung Fu Cult/Colt Master" version, not the "Lord of the Wu Tang" version. This is a pretty light-hearted movie. Good action, lots of wire work, and some funny characters and subtitles. It has a lot of characters, so it's tough to keep straight who is who. But the movie's good enough to watch at least a few times, so it gets better with each viewing. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes the newer style martial arts movies and has an imagination.
wirestone
The plot of the movie is based on a popular Kongfu novel by Jin Yong, THE most famous Chinese writer of the last fifty years. This novel is one of my favorite of all his works, but in order to cram the story into movie-length, much has been changed and cut. And changed and cut in the typical style of Hong Kong kongfu TV soap operas.Hong Kong kongfu TV soaps are altogether bad. First, Cantonese is spoken and thus reduced the historical feel of the scenes - there's a reason why Ang Lee asked all the actors in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to speak Mandarin, even if they could speak fluent Cantonese. All characters from this movie are from Northern China, and Cantonese, a rather modern dialect, just don't fit here.Second, typical to kongfu soaps, there's a lot of overacting in this movie. It seems that Hong Kong TV series directors and actors think overacting is how ancient Chinese behaved or they believe without overacting the audience will not feel the history or something. Anyway, the acting is worse than most B movies of the 70's and 80's, and that says a lot.Third, too much makeup. And this is also typical of Hongkong kongfu soaps, big hairs, big eyebrows and eye shadows, wierd hairdoes and costumes. As if the makeup artists think without the hair and clothing, the audience cannot distinguish between the characters. The story happens during a time of extreme close-mindedness in Chinese history, wierd clothing and hairdoes were not tolerated at all. All that makeup is used just to please the lowest denominator of the audience which is rather a small portion.Last, typical to Hongkong kongfu soaps, the action scenes, THE MOST IMPORTANT PART FOR MANY, is of very low quality. Due to the fact not that many actual martial artist or Chinese opera performers (like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, etc.) will work for television, action scenes in kongfu soaps often over-use wires and explosives. When a person jumps 10 feet in the air and 20 feet across, when a master's "chi" causes an explosion 20 feet away, when you can see the "chi" as lightning coming out of someone's hands, the believability of the action is down to nill. And like typical kongfu soaps, this film uses camera closeups to mask the real fighting, you are only allowed to see hands, arms, legs and feet in most shots, not the entire body movements of the actors/stunt doubles.The production value of this very B movie is zero, acting is zero (Jet Li maybe a martial art superstar, but he can't handle a romantic lead role). This film is so bad, it isn't funny any more; it is so bad, it isn't even good, just worse. Avoid this thing at all time.
