In what has to be one of the more interesting turns for a character in a martial arts movie, Ti Lung (as Tie) oversees the day-to-day activities of his students (including a Lion Dance, which they win before belittling and then belaboring their opponents). Tie is a strict disciplinarian- at first. Enter Rong Feng (Chen Kuan-Ti), who decides to open an opium den. Rong learns of Tie's addiction and promptly offers him a jar of opium. Before you can say "uh, gimme a second to think this one over," Tie's all but comatose, sucking on a pipe day after day (and, one presumes, night after night). As one might well expect, when it comes time for Tie to step up and man the barricades against the evil opium dealers, he's barely able to stand: in a surprising sequence, he's knocked around by Rong in front of the whole village. Will he go Cold Turkey fu and bounce back, or will the mighty Ti Lung succumb to The Pipe...? There's a bit of high-flying, Old School wirework on display here (as one might well expect in a kung fu movie about opium addiction), but it's kept to a minimum. Not a bad movie, but definitely one with at least one foot planted just a bit too squarely in The Real World.
Review of Lightning Fists of Shaolin
