Wang ming sha xing

The movie is tagged with the Ocean Shores logo but the quality is superior to the usual VHS release so I suspect this digital version was from an early laser disk. The dialog is dubbed into English.

It opens with our hero on the road to a town where some laborers expecting to be paid were murdered instead. He is accused of the murder but the villains then just drive off. The plot is the standard son out to revenge the murder of his father plus throw in the bad guys trying to take over the town and the evil Japanese dealing opium. The characters never develop more than one dimension and the pace, despite expository dialog, moves along. The fights are mostly brawls with little or no trampolines and wire work.

It all comes down to the final fight and the challenge of making it still interesting. Good use is made of a working mine location and the sequences are dangerous simply because of where the fighters are standing. The actors get their good clothes all filthy and roll around and even swim in the mud. The ground fighting lacked any submission techniques or such and was really just for the filth.

Overall, I rate it just slightly above average for the year and genre and for the fans of this genre only.