Martial Arts of Shaolin

This is a strange film in HK movie history. It's possibly the last "traditional" Shaw brothers film, released a year after the film studio closed it's doors. In fact there are no scenes shot in HK at all. Nearly everything is on location in Mainland China. It's also the last Liu Chia Liang film working with his Shaw crew of cameramen and technicians. It's one of the first HK and Mainland co-productions and the first time Jet Li worked with anyone other than Mainland film crews. Jet Li has been unusually frank about his unhappiness with the work habits of the HK crew, director Liu included.

The story is clearly from HK as Jet Li gets into situations that would have been considered unacceptable in a Mainland production at that time. He plays a mischievous kung fu monk with an agenda for revenge against an evil warlord. He meets up with a girl with the same agenda but she's disguised as a boy which fools everyone but the audience. Many, many fight scenes with a generous helping of lion dancing.

The film is thematically the style of Liu's previous films for the Shaw studios right down to the woman dressed as a man plot device. If the story was a little bit more substantial perhaps this film would be as well known as Liu's other classics. It's easy to imagine replacing the entire Mainland acting company with the Shaw regulars. The camera work is in the Shaw style but with the added benefit of gorgeous Mainland landscapes and famous landmarks. The action is classic Liu Chia Liang choreography with a Mainland Wu Shu twist. The mass action scenes are exceptional.

Great action, Jet Li playing a comic character, excellent photography. Recommended.

A very enjoyable movie, Jet Li is phenomenal, his movements really sell the action.

This film is packed with fighting from beginning to end. Jet Li is as always very impressive and so are all the other actors (in their fighting, that is). The acting isn't very good, though(not that i know any Chinese). The actors sound like babies shouting to each other and the evil guy's laugh is unbeatable. I like the Amiga-sounding sound effects, though, and the theme song just sticks to you're brain like glue on paper. There is also some nice scenery. I love this movie.

There were some really nice fight sequences, and some really colourful spectacle. I really enjoyed the visuals.

I watched this on amazon prime and they only seemed to have a dubbed copy available, which is unfortunate, cause the English dubbing on martial arts film is always dreadful. Everyone talked like 1930s actors, which made it very difficult to take anyone seriously.

It was pretty draggy at times. I thought at one point, wow, this is a really long movie, only to discover that it is 90 minutes, (The right length!) and that I was 1 hour and 22 minutes in. This could have been an hour instead.

There were some theological inconsistancies that I think were supposed to be a large part of the plot, but fell a bit flat. We can put some of that blame on the dubbing I'm sure.

hoping that Jonas Svensson doesn't mind my sarcastic echo to his comment. This is a really entertaining flick where you'll see exciting and competent kung-fu action and some funny moments. It is not hard to me to agree with Jonas about the lack of amazing acting skills and a solid screenplay but, you know, Al Pacino is a bad kung-fu performer and have been fired by the production and Federico Fellini was shooting "Ginger and Fred" that year. Jokes apart kung-fu enthusiasts know very well what is the spot in martian art films and this whole series do not ever miss it. Therefore if you like the good ol' Chinese martian art film style no fear and enjoy this really funny flick.