Bai sheng tang

The movie opens with the backstory of the master. He was crippled in a tournament by an illegal move. Cut to children street performers. The bad guys simply kidnap them and their grandfather in broad daylight. One chivalrous man tries to stop them. The master intervenes and takes the young guy as his student. The kids are forced to perform in Chinese opera. The female lead, Suen Ga-Lam becomes their protector. She soon meets the young guy, Lam Shui-Yiu.

This is a big budget Taiwanese production I would assume from the sets and costumes. It is unusual in that there is no dialog for about the first six minutes. (My copy is English dubbed.) It has the standard training sequence but it is rather brief and the student is training on bamboo scaffolding. The pacing is good so no fast-forward needed. Most important, the fights are all above average.

I originally wrote this review in 2016. The biggest problem I had was the poor video quality. I had to watch the movie on a cell phone because the picture was poor. The file size was only 178 kb and about 300 kb is needed just to have "VHS quality".

I have since acquired a better copy. At 279 kb it is acceptable for viewing on a HDTV. Fans of this genre are used to quality like this. I continue to recommend it for such fans but keep looking until you get better picture.