Search - The Fist, the Kicks & the Evils on DVD

Bolo's best movie

morgoth | omaha, NE | 05/14/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Seriously. It is not like his best movie, but the best that he has ever performed in one. He shows to be a true expert on screen. He seems to be using the peking opera style but HE DOESN"T LOOK AT HIS OPPONENT WHEN FIGHTING. It is truly an amazing thing to watch. I am really stuck between giving this movie a 2 and a 4. Which means I should be giving it a 3, but I will thoroughly explain.

Let me throw some names at you. Bruce Leung, Bolo Yeung, Phillip Ko Fei, and Ku feng(aka guk fung). Those guys are all in this and they all fight. WOW!!!!

The movie starts out with liang doing the credit show off sequence. Bruce does his crane style and man will you be surprised if you are one of those people who watch this just to see animal styles. In this scene and in two others where he is not fighting but just practicing I guess, he is doing a HARD style. The crane is supposed to be a soft style but man oh man, I like this style a lot better. Bruce Liang is truly one of the best ever to hit the screen when fighting. He has some really cool training with his teacher and teacher puts his hands like a cup and bruce puts his foot in and flies up into the air. This guy is TRULY spring loaded.

So the movie starts with LEE TSO-NAN training his students at his school. The director of the hot, the cool, and the viscious, shaolin vs. lama, and phantom kung fu. That lee tso-nan. Now in the commentary myer's and samuel's make a very wrong assumption that he directs this. I did not know this was lee, but will go ahead and take bobbyu samuel's word since he said that he was a close friend of his. I have also seen him have parts in hell'z windstaff and return of the deadly blade. He was not the director of those and he is CERTAINLY not the director of this. His stories have actual character in them and he also worries about acting which this movie obviously did not concentrate on. So anyway he is teaching his students when 3 minutes into the movie bolo and ko fei show up. The story doesn't need to be told becasue it is the most watered down version of snake in the eagle's shadow I have ever seen. But it does have the wong fei-hung theme which is always accepted by me. So bolo beats up the master while ko fei smokes his pipe. You may not recognize bolo right away with this horrible birds nest wig and weird facial hair. He is all covered up this movie with a huge robe he wears but when they show him next to anybody you can see that his neck is like twice as big. The first fight is ok and bruce wants to go save him. I think he has a jackie role in this and is just like the cleaning boy. So he can't stand it that his master is dying and wants to learn kung fu from him. So tso-nan teaches him for a little while and then bolo comes along for a truly scary moment that could really only be delivered by him. Thenn bruce goes and learns form ku feng. I was a little confused in this cause he called feng father in one line. I dunno but anyway, ku feng and bolo have a great fight and we know who wins since it is like 30 minutes into the movie. Now you are all sayin, of course bolo dies, like I said he actually gets to fight in this. he doesn't get beat at the start by like david chiang. Now he has to go to another teacher and it really made me mad that ric myer's couldn't come up with a name for this guy, cause he is GOOD. I mean, do your freaking research. Maybe they did all those commentaries in one day, I would believe it. So the teacher is very athletic but not like bruce. This guy is truly one of the ultimate bootmasters. Not quite hwang jang lee but could rival him any day in a contest. And probably is better than other felow superkickers like sun shien(scorpion), and I like his legs better than joh liu. He is only like 5 foot 3 or so but he can kick the crap out of anybody. So now I must talk about the acting performance. This is truly of epic proportions. He is such a firecracker it is unbelievable. Bruce Liang serves no purpose but to show up, be annoying, fight people, kill them, and be even more annoying. You HAVE to see this performance to believe. His character plays out like a 9 year old kid with ADD who you need to keep pointing in the right direction so he doesn't walk right off of the cliff. It is one of the greatest things I have ever seen in cinema history. But get ready for this fight.

Bruce gives the facial expression of a lifetime, and then goes to fight bolo. And in contrast to bruce, bolo gives a wonderful acting performance to go along with best fighting performance ever. This is the best fight I have ever seen him in and he is so graceful, it is a pleasure to watch, over and over and over and over again. He doesn't pull out any of his leg work like he did in image of bruce lee. And ric myers makes an unbelievable stupid comment when he says that bolo never uses his legs unless it is a finishing move. Yeah, he was a taekwondo practitioner for over 30 years and doesn't kick casue he can't. What ric and many other people don't realize is how athletic he is. His legs aren't fast as say Hwang Jang Lee or Grandmaster Whang in-sik, but he isn't called the chinese hercules for nothing. So a spectacular fight that could have had a beter ending, but if you know of a better bolo movie than this, please tell me, cause you can see that I love this guy.

Now bruce goes on to kill ko fei and this fight was good but nothing to write about. It just gets too weird and barely manages to stay watchable.

So 5/5 for bolo's performance and a 2/5 for the movie. But I laughed so hard at liang's performance, I have to say buy this for 2 of the most unique performances in kung fu history.

The commentary is actaully really good but myers will just go off for like 5 minutes at a time on a filmography, and it could be from like anybody. They didnt even mention chan lau's top performance of his career which was in kung fu zombie. But they do a good job of talking about him along with many others. Not a great commentary but it will make you laugh."