Review (5/5): A hearty meal of Shaolin Kung-Fu with all the trappings
If you like the high-flying Shaolin style of Kung Fu flick, this film's for you. You'll marvel at Woo-ping Yuen's directorial sensitivity in extracting the nuance's of the genre in both the fight scenes and the plot. And of course, Woo-ping Yuen's martial arts choreography can't be beat. There are some truly beautifully scenes, focusing on things like classic brushwork and a Cantonese stir fry. The characters manage to express themselves through their faces and gestures, which makes up for what came through the translation as rather cartoonish dialog. True to the genre, the background scenes provide just enough motivation to make you cheer for the good guy in the fight scenes -- no more, no less.
Plotwise, you get the masked good guy defending the peasants against a foolish and corrupt local court, a Northern outsider who blows into town and proves to be a Kung-Fu butt-kicker, a child of said kicker of butts who's being schooled in the Shaolin arts himself and provides a strong focus for everyone's affections (and though it's not apparent in the movie, apparently becomes a legend in his own right), the Florence-Nightingale-like love interest -- who mixes it up with the boys and holds her own, a few fistfuls of corrupt Shaolin monks, an ugly virgin who is both the butt of jokes and kicks some serious butt herself, a sprinkling of nasty imperial guards and a buffoon-like local constable who shows his heart and goodness in the end.
The main departure from the genre is that there is no bad guy focus other than a corrupt system of imperial government. The embodiment of that government only makes himself known as the flesh and blood bad guy in the final third of the movie. His menace seems to lie mostly in his beard and nasty looks, but he turns out to have a few tricks up his sleeve (pun intended, but you've got to see the film). And in what may be a first, it takes two good guys to take out this bad guy. They accomplish this in one of the more spectacular fight scenes ever filmed -- all on poles reminiscent of a pier that's lost its boardwalk.
The fight scenes seem to emphasize balance and mystical stance names over pure force. The women hold their own, and each warrior stops to comment on the skills of the other, with nods to their techiques, along the lines of "ah, the peasant sweeping the street", "ooh, he controls the angry chambermaid", "wu goes to market", and so forth. The boy's litany of positions during one scene is almost magical. Poison, fire, pole-arms, tricks, darts, traps, nets, and every other martial arts accoutrement gets its time in the sun, the moonlight, or candlelight.
In the end, if you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you'll like this.