Watched this with the audio commentary by two film critics, but kept the subtitles on to keep up with the story. Obviously, Id seen the film before. Id heard that I Kuang (Ni Kuang) admitted borrowing plot elements from Louis Chas Return of the Condor Heroes and that it was discussed in the track, which also points out a young Lau Kar Leung (Liu Chia Liang), whom I would have missed, failed attempts to see Yuen Wo Ping, who is known to have worked on this film as a stuntman, and of course, whether director Chang Chehs male bonding (and bondage once he gets to his later Venom films) obsessions are part of the culture and genre, or more a personal preference. The movie itself is brilliant, and the best by Chang, so far as Ive seen. Hes said to have directed about a hundred, and i doubt Ive seen a quarter of that. Oddly enough, Chang returns to the source material in the fourth film of the Brave Archer series, an official adaptation of the Condor Heroes. Those films are a mess, though the first one, also called Kung Fu Warlords if you used to watch these types of flicks on Saturday afternoons or at the theatre for a buck, is weird fun. One armed Swordsman takes a small piece out of a 1200 page novel to make a nice focused story. Otherwise, adapting the stories can only work on TV (typically at 25-40 hours for each book), or as fan fiction (Wong Kar Wais Ashes Of Time). Five outta Five.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 00:54:37 +0000
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