Picture this: Three swordsmen enter a Chinese manor home, and heroically face off against dozens of guards to get to the master of the house, accompanied by some epic Chinese martial arts movie music. Once they reach it, they find that their quarry is not home... but his wife and son are. So they decide to chop some of their limbs as a calling card. As you do.
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| Not sure I agree with that decision, but loving the enthusiasm there! |
And this being a Shaw Brothers movie, you can bet that they not only go through with it, but it's also shown (it doesn't linger in the carnage, thankfully, but it is genuinely upsetting). Guess those guys weren't the heroes.
Just as they finish chopping the kid's arms off, the master of the house Du TianDao (Chen Kuan-Tai) finally makes an appearance, and quickly and brutally dispatches them with his legendary Black Tiger style. Of course he calls out each specific technique as he uses it; I love this sort of thing!
Once they're all dead, dad attends to his son and promises him he will build iron arms for him, with which he will become a great martial artist.
Smash cut to ten, fifteen years later and dad's now explaining how he's finally found the perfect metal arms for his now grown-up son (Lu Feng). That's some comically economic storytelling right there, but hey, it works. Good setup for a heroic protagonist, right?
Well... no. It turns out dad rounded up all the descendants of the three assholes who killed his wife and maimed his son. He let them live and train in martial arts... only so that his son, now an unstoppable juggernaut with metal fists could brutally demolish them. Dad does an evil laugh and everything! A little later the son seems to think Tiandao is taking things too far and looks a little bit apprehensive, but nah, he'll quickly show he's just as much of an embittered asshole as dear old pa.
Things get out of hand as TianDao and son terrorize the townspeople and start crippling people for pretty minor infractions; The perennially shirtless town smith (Meng Lo) calls them out on it, and he's forced to drink a poison that takes his voice - and when he's still defiant in writing, he gets deafened for his trouble. A wandering salesman (Philip Kwok) is blinded for complaining how bad things are; and a poor bystander (Sun Chien) gets his legs chopped off just for bumping into the young master!
The trio of victims (crippled, but not yet avengers) get together in the smith's shop, and the way they communicate and help each other is genuinely cool and well thought out. But there's some cruelty left to be dispensed before the movie finally shifts gears. First, after Wei Datie offers to support his newfound friends with his blacksmith work, Tiandao proves yet again to be a master of the dickish arts when he threatens anyone who would patronize the shop, leaving them with no means of income. Then a wandering martial artist (Sheng Chiang) learns of Tiandao's reign of terror and solemnly vows to put an end to it. He heads straight to the manor but is defeated after a pretty cool fight (sword vs. weighted chain); Tiandao 'cripples' him by crushing his head in a vise and causing irreparable brain damage.
In yet another subversion of expectations, the most straightforwardly heroic figure in the film becomes the comic relief character, a petulant, childish bugs-bunny style trickster figure. This movie kind of rules.
Tiandao's other victims take in their now-idiot would-be saviour and, discovering a letter to his master on his person, decide to take him home. Once there the old teacher, understandably shocked at his fellow martial arts master's behaviour, offers to train the three cripples so they can get their revenge.
It's a very enjoyable training segment. I especially love that the blind man is basically just told "you just need to listen really good" and he immediately starts shooting falling leaves off the sky with a marksman's precision. All of them are moulded over three years into martial arts masters, each with their own style, of course, and with metal prosthetics included where needed. This is also where the scene I best remembered from the movie comes in, a fight with oversized metal rings that features some incredible acrobatics.
From there we finally get to the third act, where they return to town to finally deliver Tiandao and his clan some sorely deserved comeuppance with a series of back-to-back fights that culminate in a spectacular frontal assault against the manor. It mirrors that first scene, and more importantly, the iron rings make a crowd-pleasing return.
The story structure is superb - all the grim business in the first act really pays off once the crippled avengers assemble (sorry, had to put that in somewhere) and kick ass. It's the most satisfying revenge yarn the Shaw Brothers, who put out a revenge story or two over the years, produced. Especially because Tiandao starts out being such a sympathetic figure before he quickly proves to be a capital-A asshole.
It's enough of a tragedy to have appropriately epic weight, and for the bonds the characters establish to matter. I won't pretend that it can't come off as cheesy to our sensibilities (time and cultural distance rarely help - nor does some truly over-the-top acting) but if you are willing to engage with it, it more than earns the label of 'heroic bloodshed' that's frequently applied to Wuxia films.
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| As an actor, Lu Feng is one hell of a martial artist. |
Director Cheh Chang does a great job with this one. The guy was a legend; Name any number of classical martial arts movies and his name is bound to come up, and probably more than once. He does wonders here with your typical SB movie budget, and keeps things moving, varied and exciting. This one has a heavy Sergio Leone influence and is full of those classic dramatic zooms to people's faces and exaggerated sound effects that people associate with old martial arts movies (Chang was hugely influential, and reportedly introduced Leone-isms to Hong Kong cinema.)
Also of note is some playing around with fish-eye lenses on panoramic views and the very '70s wardrobe, especially designed to show off people's (very buff) chests; beefcake lovers rejoice. Special mention goes to an oversized disco medallion that gets an in-universe justification!
The action is top-notch, as you'd expect from Team Venom. It sports at least some Wuxia influence; there is a little wire work and hidden trampolines, but things tend to be pretty grounded - more of a standard martial arts flick, though one with a fairly epic scope. There's no overt magic or mystical elements, but a lot of it is pretty far-fetched, as usual with this sort of thing.
The 'gimmick' of the movie, the heroes' various disabilities, are well represented even if the movie cheats by basically treating them as fully able once they power up. But there's still some good stuff when the bad guys try to use their weaknesses against them, and the way they keep communicating with the deaf/mute smith gives the movie a pretty unique feel. The film also goes completely silent when it adopts the smith's point of view early on, which is pretty effective.
A lot of the fights feel very staged and are more acrobatic/dance-like than modern action tends to be, but that's part of the charm; Gratuitous cartwheels and pirouettes are the order of the day. There's a huge amount of imagination and humor to the permutations in the fighting and the moves pulled - the word exuberant comes to mind. It might not convince anyone who's not already on board with this sort of thing, but for converts it'll be a constant delight.
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