Mi shi

It opens to a fight in the tall grass as several swordsmen attack Ko Yu-Min (General Sung) who fights back with a staff. He was traveling incognito to a meeting. They discuss recent events about the king. In a flashback the king was seduced as part of a plan to change the inheritance of the throne. The men discuss their counterplan.

After the credits, a traveling couple are attacked by thugs. A hero (Gam Tiu) steps in before she is raped. He gets directions and rides off. He stops to talk to a hermit. There's another flashback concerning the inheritance of the throne. Seductive women are behind the coup. That night our hero meets another hero. There is an abrupt cut to a fight in the woods and the video quality gets so bad I can't tell who is fighting. Next our hero is sneaking into a castle prison. He releases bother Lee Kai. They escape all the while watched by the other hero.

By 30 minutes in the pace is dragging because the characters are still talking about doing something instead of doing something. The entrance of Pat Ting Hung's character only adds more drama instead of getting things moving. Even at 36 minutes six characters are still sitting around and the subtitle read s "Let me tell you the plan..." My copy is a digital file that plays as widescreen on a HDTV. It is not true widescreen though as the sides seem cropped. There are Chinese and English hard subtitles. The video resolution is similar to VHS tapes. It is labeled as a Jamal Kung Fu project. (You can do your own search on that.)

When watching a relatively obscure movie from the golden age of martial arts movies from 1967 to 1984 my first concern is not finding good parts. I am first hoping I do not find bad parts. It is easy to stink up one of these movies. Annoying voiceovers can ruin a movie. This is something totally out of the movie makers control but I can recall a few movies I had to turn the sound off because of the voices. Bad subtitles can be amusing but can also cause the viewer to miss points that could have improved the experience. A bad fight sequence seems to require a better fight sequence just to get even. Bad fights include: fighting in the dark and cannot be seen, a wave of the sword sends stunt men flying, obvious lack of focus and/or power, over use of wires and trampolines, "laser beams" shooting out of the palms of their hands, and shaky cameras.

Only a hard core fan of this genre would come across this movie these days and to that fan I would rate this as below average. It takes too long to get moving and the fights have too many hokey elements that can be dismissed as "magic".