Quinoa1984

Come Drink With Me doesn't have any kind of groundbreaking story - it's about a young man who gets kidnapped by sone punks and happens to be a son of governor and the brother of the powerful Golden Swallow (one of the phenomenal martial arts stars of hers or any generation, Cheng Pei-Pei, what a screen presence and what equally graceful and sharp skills as a fighter on film) and what happens when she goes up against these bad guys to get him back. But you don't necessarily have to watch this to get something all that deep or profound, and director King Hu knows that.

Sometimes there is the pleasure in seeing great attitudes on the faces of these actors who trained their asses off to perform well and to what specifications were needed on the sets and in the fights (camera and editing tricks are used only at minimum and Hu favors longer takes and wide compositions whenever he can, so it's mostly of the time), and Come Drink With Me gives the audience so much pleasure in watching Pei-Pei mess up a whole lot of dudes and then as well the full-of-calm-swagger star Elliot Ngok Wah (sadly both of them are no longer with us) as the Drunken Knight. Just his scenes with Pei-Pei in the second half, particularly where he goads her into throwing that giant rock at him, are wonderful and intense alone.

I do think if you want Hu at his very best Dragon Inn and his epic Touch of Zen are superior, but that doesn't take away from Come Drink With Me as a classic of its own kind when it comes to the many times fights and sword battles break out, everything is clear and dynamic and when the pointy ends hit the flesh it's intense and only sometimes completely blood-and-squib soaking mayhem.

Lastly, I was also impressed by the overall spirit of the story, and that for like five or ten minutes it becomes a Musical with a group of signing small orphan children with the most delightfully weird patches of hair. It adds an innocence to a story that is a little bogged down in some details that aren't as strong. As one small critique: if that Drunken Master could do *that* with his hands at his adversaries before, why not do it a little more? Maybe it was to save on budget, I guess.

Overall, The Eagle I'm sure was evem more spectacular for its time and it has some fun moments of adventure a century later - my favorite set up and payoff was with the bear in the cellar and how that attack unfolds when our Black Eagle under duress fights back very easily against it (bearly you might say...) - and it's simplicity in the main bones of the story is its charm. Brown also has some clever lighting effects and staging at times, like when we see the Black Eagle framed in a room as he's entering and his shadow casts a pall over the figure in the bed he's going in to attack.

The thinness of the narrative does make it a little less than a classic, at least for me, and the acting from much of the supporting players (like the guy playing Kyrilla) is rather broad and hasn't held up so well over time. And the ending isn't quite so believable given what we've seen and know about at least one key character. But Valentino is dashing and entertaining and suave and all the things that come with a name like, well, Valentino (doesn't that already sound like someone who comes packing with a romantic adventurous swagger?) Not to mention it isnt just resting on the looks or mannerisms, it's a real performance with layers of physicality and in how he shifts between his created personas.

I don't think I'd seen a film with him in the lead before, and this was not a disappointment as far as a vehicle in being different figures in one film (as the fallen Russian lieutenant, as the vigilante and as another character, seemingly... a French Count!) The more I think on him and the movie as a whole the more I like it. Also, that shot, and you know the one as it's around 40 minutes into the film and because of the seemingly seamless and spellbinding power of the moving camera as it goes over that dinner table that has around 30 people end to end, is one of the truest examples of why cinema is its own distinctive medium (and a darn good one at that)! 7.5/10.