The Japanese, featuring Japanese born South Korean Hwang Jang-Lee, are tearing down signs and beating up kung fu teachers to prove their martial arts is superior. Our hero befriends a beggar and takes him to tea. A fight breaks out. A girl steps in to stop it and she beats up our hero. The master learns of the fight and cuts off his training and makes him do book learning. The book teacher is uncle of the girl who beat him. The Japanese also defeat hero's teacher but do not kill him. They are also smuggling on the side. Master's son defeats some of the lesser Japanese but ultimately loses. He complains to teacher that he is holding back on secret techniques and these techniques are becoming lost. Our hero learns mental strategy from the book teacher and is able to defeat the girl now. (Why didn't she also learn this from her uncle will never be known.) The son gets a rematch and revenge but it is mostly accidental. Hwang Jang-Lee becomes more angry and returns to kill four sons. There is more training, more revenge on revenge, and even a lion dance is thrown in for some reason.
The movie seems to have big production values but remains obscure today. It was dubbed into English for VHS release and there is also a wide screen dubbed version but the one I have though wide screen is no better video resolution than VHS. There are also Thai subtitles in a few places for some reason.
I have said that the best of these movies are all about the martial arts for a story line. This movie, in addition to the revenge plot, is all about the martial arts but it is not one of the best. The movie is by the numbers, formulaic, good enough but never goes beyond that. There is only one moment of creativity and that it is the training session on the raft. I rate it completely average for the year and genre and it carries my average recommendation for the average fan.
