Buddhist Fist And Tiger Claws [DVD]

The film starts off with a scene from Dragon on Fire (that was edited with different dubbing) with legendary kung fu superstar Philip Ko defeating a challenger and then the title itself appears and the "actual film itself starts thereafter", so needless to say the first and quick fight scene has absolutly nothing to do with the movie in any way ((however because of the change of the dubbing, some would believe that this scene is part of the film, but trust me watch Dragon on Fire (where this fight scene actually belongs to)and you'll see what I mean)).

Anyway back to the film, the plot involves three men looking for a map that leads to a treasure somewhere in the mountains. Of course they eventually get the map but find it hard to seperate (no surprise there this is stacks of gold we're talking about) so they seperate the map into three pieces. Naturally it doesnt take long before two of the three decide to get a little greedy and take out the third member (but instead one of the two end up dead) and then our man Hwang Jang Lee is finally up and kicking!!!

Hwang plays a very unusual character in the sense that you don't know what he will be upto next, and his attitude is full of deviousness and cowardness, while his buddy Charles Han (the star from Strike of Thunderkick Tiger) is the typical honest good guy who always seems to be there for him. Anyway their purpose is to make money from casinos by working as a team whilist pretending not to know each other. In one incident they screw it up, and find themselves tied up in the middle of the dessert. I wont drag on with that part, that scene has to be watched as it is so so funny.

From there the hunt is on, on who can obtain the treasure map, and when the pressure starts to pile on one of the three men (from the opening scene) hires an assasin to get rid of the competition namely Hwang and Charles. The result: some of the best bootwork ever commited to film with Hwang in fine form, displays to us why he was chosen for Jackie Chan's top films. Having said that Charles Han is also exceptional in his role of the good guy.

By now you might have realised that this film is actually a representation of the Clint Eastwood classic western "The Good The Bad and The Ugly", and this (truly) being the eastern version of the film, however you wont see bullets flying, instead the guns are replaced by traditional chinese kung fu, how lovely is that, I mean the eastern side surely has their own means of justice and rather than use guns to shoot them off, their kung fu will do just fine, thats the whole point anyway. I'm sure by reading this, you have already lernt who the good is, who the ugly is and who the bad is.

Just don't ask why the film has been given a tedious title, when a more motivated title for the film would have been better. Still, that's only a minor fault, the film itself is fantastic and I can tell you right now that I have watched this film at least ten times already!! Its that GOOD!!!

Highly recommended, even for non-martial art fans, but any Hwang Jang Lee fan out there you need to add this to your collection!!!