Da tai jian

Stop me if this story sounds familiar. A child sees his parents killed by corrupt court officials so he goes to Shaolin Temple to learn kung fu to get revenge. Now you know the beginning, middle and end of this story. Chang Yi has matured from playing the good guy to playing the white eyebrows villain character he will play for almost the rest of his movie career. Sammo also puts on some white eyebrows and an overall evil eunuch look but I don't think he pulls it off. Sammo needs a beard to look like a bad guy in my opinion, to cover up some of his baby face look. The "pointy index finger style" of kung fu he uses looks silly too. "Old horse face", as I like to affectionately call Carter Wong, scores the lead hero role. Lucky for the audience the role involves minimal acting. Carter can be quite expressive while he fights but otherwise he can only do "angry glare", "I'm listening" and "shocked surprise". His fight with Sammo is excellent because I love the three section staff and Sammo handles it excellently. The fight is too short though. The final fight array technique with the fighter's leaping on each others shoulders and responding to drumbeats was kind of dumb. Overall I can only rate it a notch over plain average for the year and genre.