Another Wal-Mart $4 special that turns out to be not bad. A militiaman, Lao Chin-Chun is defeated by a stranger and begs the stranger to become his teacher. The teacher teaches him the eagle fist, the toad fist as well as the dying fist. The teacher also shows him how to lock the pressure points and nerves, but the teacher doesn't know how to unlock the points. The teacher tells Lao the story of how his master was killed by the Red Dart, who then took a book that taught how to unlock the nerves. So Lao sets off to recover the book for his teacher. Along the way he meets his teacher's cousin, who is in desperate need of a dentist. Lao gets a job teaching kung fu and it turns out his boss, Tao is the Red Dart. Lao and a friend from the militia team up to beat Tao. In a shocking plot twist it turns out Lao's teacher who hired the Red Dart to steal the book, but the Red Dart kept it. The teacher planned for Lao to unwittingly do his dirty work. The teacher now attacks Lao, but with his dying breath the Red Dart delivers a dart to the teacher's main nerve, killing him.
The movie starts off good with a fight followed by a bunch of training stuff, but then slows down before the big fight at the end. The training stuff wasn't bad, or rather the teacher torturing Lao. Tao has a vulnerable point that is protected by a gold plate. The guy who plays Tao does some good flipping and stuff. The kung fu stuff was pretty good, the main characters were good. There was one fight where it was impossible to see what was going on, as it was shot in the dark. The fight was a few minutes long and it would have been nice to see it. Another disappointment was the fight between Lao and his teacher at the end. They didn't even fight. The teacher punched Lao around and then the Red Dart spit a dart at him and he died, somewhat anti-climatic. I was hoping for a big brawl, but instead nothing. Ignoring those two flaws, not a bad way to waste an hour and a half, you could do worse.
"Review" by Keith