1978
Directed by Liu Chia-liang
I been saving this movie for when I really needed to escape for a couple hours as I always have an absolute blast with kung fu movies. Incidentally, did anyone see the trailer for the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel coming out in 2016? I got a little too excited.
San Te is on a quest of vengeance after the Manchu officials brutally murder his family and friends. My version of the film was extremely hard to follow, as it was dubbed in English. Whoever did the dubbing didn't seem to be too concerned if the audio actually matched the scene on screen at that moment. Luckily these films aren't exactly dialogue driven.
Frequent readers of mine are probably bored hearing me gush about this genre, without truly considering each individual film's quality. I will say that this is probably one of the worse kung fu selections from The Book I have seen. I didn't find the fight scenes to be that convincing. I often found myself thinking "how did he get so bloody?" Still, some of the tasks that San Te has to complete are unbelievably cool and make me want to play a Shaolin video game. I also have to add that the last fight scene was really cinematically beautiful. Oh no, I have gone back to praising it again.
So another really fun watch that is entirely skippable if kung fu isn't your thing. As a random side note, I minored in Asian History in college so I found the tension with the Manchurians especially interesting. It was my perfect nerd package.
RATING: ****-
Interesting Facts:
The US title for the film, Master Killer, does not entirely make sense as real Buddhist monks would never take lives.
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