The Water Margin

It would be interesting to find out how the directorial chores were divided on this very enjoyable production. The style is consistent throughout most of the film except for some poorly shot opening scenes. Those who wince at the classic Chang Cheh red paint brutality will be relieved to know that it's limited to the very end of the film. The rest of the film is filled with good action and brisk plotting.

The film is filled with dozens of unique characters, all introduced with title cards even 90 minutes into the film. Readers of the famous book might be interested but most are useless to remember as they barely ever do anything. Fortunately the film has enough merit that you can easily watch without getting confused by the parade of introductions. The two Japanese leads are excellent as is the rest of the ensemble cast while David Chiang carries the majority of the film's personality.

There is a strong spaghetti western influence which is not a bad thing in this case. The music soundtrack seems to be entirely ripped off from other films. But the tracks stolen are mostly good, if unusual, choices.

The martial arts are frequently very good when Chiang's character is fighting. It's a version of Chinese wrestling that is not shown too often. Chuan Chen must have been the wrestling choreographer since his only other film credit is the sequel to this film. The weapon battles are early versions of the classic choreography of Liu Chia Liang and Tang Chia.

Many HK martial art dramas from this era are either too stagy or too brutal for my taste. This film strikes a good balance. Recommended.

"The Water Margin" is based on a great ancient tale from Chinese literature. HOwever, it's not the entire story--just a small portion of the text "Shuihu Zhuan". I am certainly no expert on it--and that's a serious problem, as I had a lot of trouble understanding the context for the film as well as the sheer number of characters. Keeping track of them was impossible for me though I assume many Chinese viewers would be far more material with the characters and source material. I wish I could have sat and watched this with a Chinese scholar--and it's very likely you'll feel the same way. The story is about revenge and abuse of power--but I did have significant trouble following the story. And, although it's a Shaw Brothers film, martial arts are not that prominent in the movie. My advice is that if you know the story well, watch it. I have no idea how to score it for you. But, for the average fan of martial arts flicks who is NOT familiar with the story, I say skip it--it's just too confusing and the action isn't enough to keep your interest.

By the way, when this film began, my uncle turned to me and asked a very obvious question--'how are those boats moving so fast?'. This is because the ships' sails are not down and there are no oars--yet the ships are going VERY fast across the water! This is supposed to be the Middle Ages--yet the boats appear to be moving as a result of outboard motors. Could the ancient Chinese have been THAT clever? I think not--though they were darned advanced at the time!

By the way, much of the soundtrack for this film was 'borrowed' from the Hollywood film "Hang 'em High". It's pretty weird, as the original film was a western made to look and sound like a spaghetti western--and now it's in a Chinese martial arts film!

Co-directed by Chang Cheh, SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON (1972, aka THE WATER MARGIN) is an action-packed Shaw Bros. costume adventure based on incidents from the multi-volume Chinese literary classic, 'Water Margin,' aka 'All Men are Brothers.' The U.S. release version (which showed in American theaters in 1973) was, at 79 minutes, severely cut, leaving glaring gaps in the story and action. (With the news of the impending digital remastering of the Shaw Bros. library, we can now hope for a future uncut release of this title.) Still, it's worth seeing as an example of unabashed nonstop fighting and colorful historical adventure involving a host of characters from the Sung Dynasty, including the infamous band of 108 Outlaws, 'gallant men' who allied together to become bandits after political corruption and court intrigue made them wanted men.

The focus of the film is on Master Lu, the famed Jade Dragon, who is imprisoned on trumped-up charges arranged by a devious steward having an affair with his wife. Members of the 108, including the boisterous, rotund Black Whirlwind, set out to rescue Master Lu and avenge the wrong done to him. Directing the official pursuit of Master Lu is his former friend and classmate, Golden Spear, who leads his forces into a climactic battle with the 108 and a one-on-one duel with Lu.

There is lots of action and intrigue in a film that moves at a dizzying pace, with great fight scenes involving all sorts of exotic weapons (including Black Whirlwind's pair of battle axes); an all-star cast; and a surprising nude scene featuring Master Lu's adulterous wife. The lead players include Chang Cheh regulars Ti Lung, David Chiang and Chen Kuan Tai, along with Lily Ho (as Tigress), Ku Feng (as Welcome Rain), Fan Mei-Sheng (as Black Whirlwind), Wu Ma, and, in an unusual bit of casting, Japanese star Tetsuro Tanba as Master Lu. (Western viewers may recall Tanba's portrayal of Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese Secret Service, in the 1967 James Bond film, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, and his role as a government official in MESSAGE FROM SPACE.) Golden Spear is played by another Japanese actor, the lesser-known Toshio Kurozawa.

SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON was followed by a sequel, SEVEN SOLDIERS OF KUNG FU, also reviewed on this site, with most of the stars returning, which detailed the further adventures of the 108 after they were pardoned by the Emperor and assigned to make war on rebel armies.

ADDENDUM (October 6, 2007): Since I wrote the above review, the original full-length Shaw Bros. release version of the film, in Mandarin with English subtitles, has come out under the title THE WATER MARGIN, in a restored/remastered letter-boxed edition on both Region 3 DVD (from Celestial Pictures) and Region 1 DVD in the U.S. (from Image Entertainment). The R3 is 120 min., while the R1 is 125 min., a difference probably attributable to PAL-to-NTSC conversion for the R3. In any case, fans basically get approximately 40 more minutes of the story, with scenes that flesh out some of the characters and their relationships. An opening text crawl informs us that the film is based on chapters 64-68 of the original literary work.

One of the special features on the R1 DVD is a one-minute-and-36-second "extended love scene" that was specially shot by Shaw Bros. for the dubbed U.S. release version and includes shots of a nude body double (for actress Ling Ling, who plays the adulterous wife of Master Lu) sharing the screen with actor Tien Ching (as Lu's treacherous aide) in the film's one sex scene.

One important distinction between the original Hong Kong version and the English dub known as SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON is found in the music score, which was largely redone for the English dub, mainly to replace music cues on the original track that were lifted from Dominic Frontiere's score for the 1968 Clint Eastwood western, HANG 'EM HIGH, which was still fresh to many American moviegoers (and to lawyers for United Artists) when SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON was released in 1973. The original Shaw Bros. music score was patched together from a variety of different sources and sounds awfully arbitrary, with the HANG 'EM HIGH cues being particularly distracting, the only glaring flaw in an otherwise masterful Hong Kong costume epic.

The film's sequel, reviewed on this site as SEVEN SOLDIERS OF KUNG FU, has also been released on Region 3 DVD by Celestial, under the title ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS. Also available is THE DELIGHTFUL FOREST (1972), newly restored as well, something of a prequel to THE WATER MARGIN, in that it shows what led Ti Lung's character, Wu Sung, to join the 108 outlaws just before the events of this film.

The Water Margin is the Avengers: Infinity War of Shaw Brothers movies, though I'm not sure if any other chapters of the epic story it partially adapted here were necessarily told in other movies. It still feels like getting introduced to a story that's ongoing; maybe like coming to the end of Marvel's third Phase without watching anything from the firsty 10 years of the MCU (I double down on the superhero movie comparison there, making it even more likely that I'm going to annoy someone).

I guess the comparison came to me because there are so many characters here, and even though I've only really scratched the surface of everything made by Shaw Brothers, I still recognized a ton of actors here (the movie probably gets an extra half-star for David Chiang; I just always like seeing him on screen, and he's cool/charming).

Action is okay. Pacing stays fast because of how much is happening and how many characters there are, but those qualities also make things harder to follow. It feels a little more like a drama than an action movie at times, but maybe that's a consequence of watching it a couple of days after John Woo's martial arts film Last Hurrah for Chivalry, which was probably more than 50% action; just relentless stuff.

Based on historical events of the 12th century, "Water Margin" tells the story of 108 heroes referred to (by their enemies) as the "Liangshan bandits". They want to fight against a corrupt government, and therefore they ask 2 famous fighters to join them. These 2 are reluctant at first, but get into trouble with the so-called law very soon. Thus they don't really have freedom of choice anymore.

"Water Margin" is a fine example of Eastern classics produced by Shaw Brothers who got a cast full of stars together including Tetsuro Tamba as Master Lu. The best role, however, went to David Chiang as his right hand man Yen Ching, the Young Dragon. With irresistible charm, he defeats anybody - from pretty ladies to fierce fighters. The movie begins slow, introducing countless characters, but becomes very powerful and gripping in the second half. One recurring theme of the musical score seems to be inspired by Carlo Rustichelli's music for "I quattro dell'Ave Maria", which reminds the audience once again how often western movies and kung-fu cinema influenced each other. "Water Margin" was later followed by the sequel "All Men Are Brothers".