Buddhist Fist

Director and martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping is best known to American audiences for transforming Laurence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves into kick-ass kung fu cyber-warriors in The Matrix, but this Hong Kong pro has been turning out some of the best fight scenes in Asian cinema since 1971. He directed Jackie Chan in his breakthrough hit Drunken Master and helped turn martial arts champion Jet Li into a screen legend by choreographing Once Upon a Time in China and Fist of Legend. By contrast his 1980 The Buddhist Fist is achingly old-fashioned, a familiar revenge film about a poor but stalwart small-town orphan who returns home from the big city to find a tangled mystery involving oodles of assassins and a criminal godfather known only as Big Small Feet. The plot is secondary to the spectacle, a tight series of precise strike-and-pose sequences that were all the rage in the 1970s, slick and practiced but stiff compared to the fluid 1980s style. Stars Yuen Shunyi and Tsui Siu Ming have neither the charisma nor the grace of Jackie or Jet, but they do pull out some furious moves in flare-ups both grim and goofy, including a deadly dinner date that brings new meaning to the term food fight and an impressive climactic duel to the death. Chunks of the score were shamelessly ripped right out of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. --Sean Axmaker ...

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