Tai Chi Master

  When Tian Bao joins a Shaolin temple as a child, his new master (Lau Shun) pairs him up with the younger Jun Bao. Their relationship is established immediately and economically: Their master asks Chin to call Jun his senior, since he's already a student and will mentor him. Tian bristles at this, since he's older and bigger; So he tells Jun he'll only call him senior when there are others around, and when they're alone he'll be the senior. Jun, although leery of disobeying authority, happily goes along with it.

 After watching some of the older kids training kung fu, they quickly enroll and start obsessing over it. Their master cautions them that they should only use it to help others, but the first thing Tian Bao does is to beat up a bully, getting both of the kids into trouble. This dynamic holds until Tian and Jun grow up to be Siu-Ho Chin and Jet Li, respectively; Tian is impulsive, aggressive and ambitious, while Jun is more kind-hearted and happy-go-lucky. Their friendship is fierce, though, and they both always look out for each other.

 Their stay at the temple comes to an end when Tian gets into trouble for over-reacting to another another student cheating in an exam fight; Jun tries to smooth things over, but when Tian attacks a monk only their master's intercession allows them to escape.

 He tells his students that a temple is not the only place to learn and sends them out to the wider world. Worried about Tian, he gifts him with a scroll of Tai Chi teachings to guide him.

 In town they soon bond (by the medium of kicking injustice in the ass) with lovely thief Miss Li (Fennie Yuen) and even lovelier abandoned wife Siu-Lin (Michelle Yeoh) - Miss Li has a fight against soldiers extorting local merchants, and Siu-Lin is attacked by her ex-husband's powerful new bride when she confronts him. Yes, this is the sort of movie where pretty much anyone knows kung-fu.

 The sworn brothers hole up in a restaurant and befriend the owners, who are soon revealed to be connected to the resistance against the evil eunuch (is there any other kind?) Liu Jin (Sun Jian-kui), who rules his lands with an iron fist.

 But Tian is not about to join the peasants in their struggle, and quickly grovels and manipulates his way into joining the eunuch's forces instead; Jun, aghast, refuses to follow, but they part amicably enough.

 Events conspire to reunite them soon afterwards when government forces try to extort the restaurant, and Tian helps the rebels cover up the ensuing soldier massacre. He also gives the rebels some inside information on when they can catch the eunuch Liu Jun unawares.

 Before you can say "it's a trap!", Tian betrays gathers all the rebels in one spot and - in a pretty chilling scene - has most of them massacred; only Jun and a couple others manage to escape. I should point out that when Tian gets a promotion for wiping out his former friends, his new uniform is appropriately evil-looking, all studded black leather and ridges. That's the sort of over-the-top visual storytelling I can really get behind.

 The betrayal breaks Jun's mind. Siu-Lin and a comic relief character take him back to an estate to try to nurse him back to sanity, which leads to a meandering 'wacky' portion of the film as Jun acts looney tunes crazy. Some of the jokes are pretty funny, but a lot of them aren't, and this section drags a little too long. It also indulges in whiplash inducing tone changes, from maudlin to broad comedy to deadly seriousness as we catch up with what Tian is up to back at the army barracks. But the situation is resolved with a really satisfying callback to a seemingly abandoned plot thread, leading to a very cool tai chi epiphany and a suitably epic confrontation against Tian.

 I actually hadn't seen this one until now! I watched tons of older martial arts movies when I was a kid, but by the mid-90s I foolishly thought I'd outgrown them. I caught up with a few of the more renowned ones later, like the wonderful Iron Monkey, the Swordsmen and the Once Upon a Time In Chinas, but I obviously have a lot of blinds spots left and I'm really kicking myself for not catching this one earlier.

 Kim Yip's script is uncommonly good, with a really well-handled, classic friends-turned-opponents arc and a series of powerful messages with actual wisdom backing them. The leads are both excellent - Jet Li is a given, but he's upstaged by Chin Siu Ho - his character is so magnetic that all the little steps towards total asshole-dom make sense and feel almost... well, never justifiable, but almost understandable. Michelle Yeoh plays backup, unfortunately, but she's as good as she always is, and definitely looks the coolest.

Sorry, Mr. Li. It's not even a contest.

 Of course, this being a movie by Yuen Woo-ping, it's chock-full of amazing fights, immaculately shot and full of inventive moments; there's a fight on an oiled floor where our heroes use the fallen as platforms, a table-breaking fight where one of the combatants ends up using table legs as stilts, and another one where an army commander literally throws soldiers at his opponent. It's an absolute joy, and had me laughing out loudly in appreciation several times.

 It'd be worth just for the action, but happily there's so much more on offer here.