It's the kung-fu experience of the millennium. The fighting style is fun, everyone's well choreographed and its overall just enjoyable to watch.
The story on the other hand is kind of hard to follow. This film is riddled with twins. That is to say two groups of people that look identical to each other but aren't. You got these two Kung-Fu masters both sporting a foomanchew beard and this kind of high authoritarian wardrobe who are supposed to be the main antagonist (and possibly a protagonist) in the movie.
Then you've got these two other guys who kind of look like your typical fighting monks. They're clad in nice robes and they have this really nice symmetrical haircut. One of them is the key protagonist of the film and the other one is a secondary protagonist. Now when these two guys are just standing next to each other it's easy to tell which one is which.
The whole thing becomes even more complicated when you realise that most of the film's dialogue is delivered between these four guys who kind of look like one another and only really speak with one another when it comes down to anything. There's also this other drunken guy and a bunch of secondary characters but none of them really matter.
Everything in this movie is just a big setup for all the different fight scenes. Most of which are fairly entertaining. Especially the ending fight between the one head monk with the fu manchu moustache and a bunch of these other guys who are trying to take him down because he's technically Invincible with this weird super technique that makes his skin like iron.
The story revolves around a staged assassination in where this one guy gains the trust of our protagonist, tries to kill one of the monks, gets the other guy blamed for it and then the whole thing becomes a kind of double Manhunt. Where the protagonist is hunting down the Assassin and everyone else is hunting down the protagonist because they think he was the one that killed the original Monk.
The movie has this weird western cowboy vibe to it. And that might be in part to the fact of the soundtrack is apparently based (if not completely taken) from an earlier 1960s Italian made spaghetti western. Which just makes this really confusing when you realise that it's a Chinese dubbed English Italian music based off of from 10 years earlier.
One of the movies greatest strengths is just a straightforward approach. It doesn't pretend to be anything more than a fun kung fu movie. Everything set in what I can arguably call the 14th century and it doesn't deviate from the basic plot. It doesn't even get involved in an awkwardly shoved in Romance with a than introduced girl. They avoid that whole stereotype.
She's just a sister to this other character who helps the protagonist and teaches him a super secret technique on how to break the iron skin.
There's some weird editing in this film. It's pretty evident that this movie is made up of different film stocks that were stored in different areas because sometimes the quality of the movie changes drastically. Occasionally you'll come across up well-intended shots that looks like it's aged a little and then other times you have this weird yellow filter that looks like it's been under the sun for a few hours add on top of that the weirding was Subbing that sometimes cuts out to direct English Dub and it just makes everything even more odd.
It's a fairly fun movie that's about 20 minutes too long. My recommendation watch half of the film, do something else for a little bit. Then come back to it.
The fight choreography is Fun; the story is okay and the whole thing is worth watching just for that last 20 minutes.
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