I always start my reviews with the opening scene of the movie. So many of these movies were re-titled for VHS rental often you don't know what you are watching. This movie opens with a guy helping a wounded uniformed man to escape. He gives details of the passwords and so we have the old Ching versus Ming plot again with the bad guys after a list of the rebel's names. Dragon Lee goes off on his mission and pretends he is just out to visit his uncle. Yuen Qiu enters the story as a swords woman stopping for a steamed bun. She defends Dragon by using her hat as a Frisbee. For some reason it was supposed to be an awesome weapon and scared off the attackers. The other awesome weapon that is not awesome at all is the Silver Hand. It's just a glove painted silver and does nothing more than any other hand. Yuen Qiu has a lengthy career from 1972 all the way to Sammo Hung's latest movie "The Bodyguard". The high point of her career is certainly as the cigarette smoking landlady in "Kung Fu Hustle". I consider her the star of this movie. I don't buy in to the whole "Bruceploitation" concept. There was never a search for the next Bruce Lee. It was just a way to make the cover of a VHS tape stand out to an American customer back in the days when there was a movie rental store on every street corner in America.
Dragon Lee apparently made a few movies in 1977 but I have yet to obtain any of those titles. His 1978 movies are all available. As a martial artist he was certainly competent, as were hundreds of others, and his acting was passable. This is the first South Korean movie that, in my opinion, is not a total stinker from start to finish. The fights are fair to average with a brief really good move thrown in.
