In my opinion probably Bruce Le's best film and one of my fav Le movies. It's not low budget as his other movies and tries to be serious. The movie starts of with some actual B&W footage of Japanese troops. There is some text onscreen, but it's in Chinese so I couldn't read it, but I did get 1931. Next, Japanese troops are invading a town. Soldiers are menacing an old lady, Chi Keung(Bruce) shows up to help his mom. She is shot in the scuffle. Bruce fights the soldiers and then saves Yip from another soldiers. Yip escapes while Chi Keung fights the soldiers, but he is caught. Yip looks for Chi Keung in a mass grave. She finds him, luckily he's still alive. The two travel to Beijing where Yip has an aunt. Shojiro arrives in Beijing and asks his father Sakada a Japanese offical to set up a duel with a kung fu master. Chi Keung who saved master Yueng from ninjas is now staying with him. Yueng and Shojiro fight, with Shojiro winning only because Yueng pulls some of his blows. Sakada sends ninjas to finish off Yeung, who is poisoned. Chi Keung challenges Shojiro, and defeats him easily. Shojiro returns to Japan. Chi Keung is pursued by ninjas until he reaches the banks of the Yellow River where he is saved by a young woman. Shojiro back in Japan trains and after passing a test from his master returns to China to fight Chi Keung again. Yip and her aunt track down Chi Keung. Shojiro tells Chi Keung that the duel will take place on the Great Wall as it is the pride of the Chinese people. The two meet and pound the hell out of each other. Although in bad shape, Chi Keung is winning, but Sakada pulls out a gun and shoots, killing Chi Kueng. Shojiro grabs his sword and slices off his father's hand and then kills himself. Chinese and Japanese carry off the bodies of their heroes. The movie ends with the picture tinted red(like blood) and battle footage. A song plays and there is some more onsreen text.
Some Bruce Le movies I can't wait until the end, but with this one I actually liked it. The story was a bit used, but it was okay. There were plenty of fights which were good. Bruce uses hand-to-hand as well as some swordplay. One scene has a ninja shooting fire at Bruce, but he fires it back setting the ninja on fire. The two fight while the back of the ninja is covered in flames. That was pretty cool. In a scene we've seen before in Fist of Fury and Fist Legend, trying to find out who killed Yueng, Chi Keung goes to a Japanese dojo. The students all attack him, but he lays the smackdown on the whole bunch. The final duel between Shojiro and Chi Keung is pretty good. Bruce Le looks good and is pretty fast, probably some of his best fights are here too. For some reason I expected Le's voice to sound kind of wussy, but his voice is deep and bad ass sounding. He's probably dubbed though. While interrogating the interpreter about Yeung, the interpreter tells Chi Keung, "I don't know nothing." Well, that means you know something! That was the only funny part, but was unintentional. Aside from that one part the movie is serious. If you haven't seen this, you should, it's a good Bruce Le flick.
I picked this movie up on the Ocean Shores VCD. It has Cantonese and Mandarin languages with Chinese and English subtitles. The picture is okay, but some night scenes suffer from some artifacting and pixelation. The subtitles were white, which made reading them impossible if the background was lightly coloured. Sometimes there would be a subtitle on the screen when no one said anything.
"Reviewed" by Keith.
Check out William's review for Ninja Over the Great Wall.