Tweekums This Hong Kong action film follows the lives of Junbao and Chin Bo who grow up learning Kung Fu in a Shaolin temple. They are eventually expelled when Chin Bo goes too far and nearly kills a fellow student who cheated in a fight. In the outside world the two initially stick together; they get into a number of fights as they help people but eventually they go their separate ways; Chin Bo joins the army of the oppressive local governor and Junbao helps the local rebels. Inevitably they will ultimately have to face each other.Those looking for lots of action and spectacular over-the-top fight scenes should enjoy this. The story is simple but effective and the characters are fun. Jet Li is on great form as Junbao and he is ably supported by Michelle Yeoh as a fellow rebel. Siu-Ho Chin is also impressive as Chin Bo; making the character likable in the earlier part of the film but believably despicable when he joins the army and becomes more and more brutal. The fights aren't exactly realistic but that is part of their charm. As well as plenty of action there are lots of genuinely funny moments. There are quite a few deaths and a fair amount of blood but this isn't too disturbing as the blood is unrealistically orange tinted! Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody wanting plenty of martial arts action and lots of laughs.This comments are based on watching the 'Tai-Chi Master' version of the film in Cantonese with English subtitles.

Nedmilly Hong Kong kung fu cinema is a complicated genre to navigate for the uninitiated. People's opinions differ so wildly from movie to movie that what you consider a gem may be a relatively obscure movie. In other words, everyone has their own favorite kung fu movie, whether it's Crouching Tiger, the 36th Chamber, 5 Fingers of Death, or - in my case - this one.I just watched this movie for the second time, and I'm even more impressed. There's something about its energy that's just completely unflagging, ferocious. The meaning and the lethal glare with which Chin Siu-ho (criminally under-billed: what a performance!) lowers his hands after performing the Buddhist Palm on his superior. The impossible fight in the temple; the legions of talented extras! The endearing innocence which Jet Li brings to his character, and the fluidity of his "Taoist boxing", real or assisted (remember when he acted like the punching bag, swinging around and knocking his weight into his opponent as if he had concentrated all his weight in his feet?) The picture and sound are much lower quality than other Yuen Woo-ping movies within a year's radius (Iron Monkey, Wing Chun), but it's difficult to notice such superficial markers of quality when the pacing, emotional power and action of the movie so surpass the era's other offerings.Another of the movie's fine points is the natural flow of its few comic sections. I often find the comic relief in "serious" kung fu movies to be stilted and awkward. Slapstick can be done ingeniously (Stephen Chow movies), but when it's stuck randomly in a movie that otherwise portrays itself as serious, it can be disastrous. The humor in the Tai Chi Master is applied with a light touch, so you can laugh instead of frowning and looking uncomfortable.But what really separates the Tai Chi Master from other excellent kung fu movies with direction and energy is its firm moral compass. When was the last time you saw a movie that knew right from wrong, but didn't make a big deal out of it? Note the distinction between right/wrong and good/evil: If Hollywood made this movie, it would be a movie about good and evil. Instead, we know that Tianbao was not intrinsically evil - he was just "wrong" ("We were wrong, Master!") A movie has little to do with real life if its characters are one-dimensional incarnations of the primeval forces of good and evil. Yet in spite of all this, the Tai Chi Master is not a heavy-handed movie "about" right and wrong - it just contains the answers."My hands do not have strength and power. My heart embraces peace and calm. Resigning myself to adversity. Seeing richness out of the void. Violence be turned to peace. There are always guiding fate. Dynamic or still. Divide or multiple. Follow fate to go in and out of mortal world." The theme song is poorly translated in the subtitles, as it should be. What is verbalized knowledge but something vague and suggestive of personal revelation? In the words of a character: "I've studied Taoism all my life, but you realize its truth all in a blink. You'll be the master of masters. I should probably retire."

bob the moo As children, Junbao and Chin Bo were put together in the monastery to help each other learn. Over they years they became great friends and great fighters to the point where Chin Bo is entered into an internal tournament to see who from all the students will progress. During the fight Chin Bo's opponent cheats, enraging Bo and causing him to beat his opponent with a savagery that is unbefitting a monk. Kicking out for this, Chin Bo and Junbao find themselves out on the street to fend for themselves. They meet a young woman, Siu Lin, and start to help her out but, after thinking about the future, the two friends go their separate ways – with Chin Bo becoming a soldier and Junbao falling in with Siu Lin and a group of rebels.With Hero currently being touted all over the place as the greatest thing ever, I thought I'd just avoid the multiplex hype and view some older Jet Li films, one of which was Twin Warriors, as it is known in the UK. The film starts with an OK plot but then it starts to fall down a bit as the story widens to include entire armies and so on. The reason it falters as it goes is due to the lack of character in the script; the film is about the lead two but, other than both can fight, one is nice, the other a bit rough, we are not given much to get into and I never really was drawn into the passion, the loss and the conflict in their relationship. The film uses some of the humour that made Fong Sai-Yuk (The Legend) so very enjoyable, but it uses it sparingly at the start and then not at all later on. As a story it is neither as involving nor as funny as it could have been and needed to be to work better for me.Of course this is a problem that can be understood when you consider that the director is better known for his fight choreography than anything else. As such he does well to produce some exciting fights that demonstrate how good wire work can be – only once or twice does he hit a bad note (Junbao's bouncing head butt was more silly than exciting). None of the fights really stand out as being one of the greats, they are often too contrived and and are (surprisingly) rather flatly filmed at times; but they are still enjoyable and are certainly a lot more fun than the stuff that Jet Li has been reduced to in his American films in the past few years. Li shows again here why he became a global star – he makes the wirework look natural and he has great charisma combined with a winning smile and the ability to convey more complex emotions. Yeoh was a big draw for me but I didn't feel she was used very well; action-wise she did well but she didn't have a great character and gradually slips into the shadows when the film comes back to focus on the battle between Li and Shi-hou. Shi-hou is OK but he is so simple – an angry man at heart; this could have been a complex character but Shi-lou makes him too easy to dislike and there is no requirement for us to think about him or feel anything at all. Support is good with the most memorable stuff coming from the rebel comic relief but the dubbing leaves a little to be desired. I'm not a snob – I don't need to see the film in the original language but often it helps with the performances. Sometimes dubbing is OK with this but here I didn't think some of it was very good and they messed with the characters by the manner of their delivery – the Emperor was the worst, he was done by some guy giving a very bad Peter Lorre impression.Overall this is an enjoyable film from a martial arts point of view but it really isn't that great. The fights are mostly well done without any of them really being amazing but the story and characters are all done far too simply to really engage and excite. The story had potential to be emotional and driving but without the characters it didn't work so well – if it had I would have been more involved making the action scenes a lot more exciting and dramatic.

treble_head It's not Drunken Master, (not the Legend of Drunken Master, the original, noodge), but what is? It is a well made tale of an ousted Shaolin monk who through hardship and madness, learns the ultimately taoist T'ai Chi Chuan.The thing I love about this film, (and you'd have to be a geek to go with this} but I love the fact that he learns T'ai Chi through his own hardships, not from a sifu (teacher), and the typical sifu or friend who dies is his friend, who, instead of dying, turns evil with power.The entire movie is a great representation of Taosism (yin, yang, good and evil}. I don't agree that Michelle Yeoh (or Michelle Kahn at she time in the film) was not well used. She provided the idea of the easy path, drinking in this case, that is so lacking in gong fu movies. She and he both redeem themselves against the head bad guy (His character name escapes me at the time}, but there is no love interest between themselves. She's tough and troubled, he's tough and troubled and they actually help each other (read: she stops drinking to save him, he learns from her care and she helps cure his madness).By the way, the head bad guy, (again, sorry about the name} was still played brilliantly even in dubbing. My friends and I still say "Hmmmmm" in his fey evil voice when thinking bad thoughts. It can be said it's typical Hong Kong fare... Good guy gets defeated, learns a new style of Gong Fu and defeats the bad guy, but then again, isn't that what Star Wars took 3 films to accomplish?Anyway, my opinion of this film is tainted by the fact that I'm a taoist, but the action is top notch, nobody flies for no reason, all the characters (even the comic relief) are fleshed out. great film. not the greatest, but, it's a hell of a lot better than "Shaolin Drunken Monk" (aka, Plan 9 from the Shaolin Temple) lol.