Search - Top Fighters: 10 Film Collection on DVD

Martial arts masterpieces for those on a budget

Master Killer | Island of Misfit Toys, USA | 07/24/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Ok, so VideoAsia's picture quality sucks, well most of the time, that is because they are taking these forgotten, all but lost films and releasing them, obviously using old VHS tapes as their main source, or possibly only source. You're gonna have to get over that and accept the trade in in the low cost of the package. Good news though, for those people who hate the poor picture quality, it is only a real problem for older titles that VideoAsia so loveingly gives us, this release has many younger titles, many of which I have seen on other VideoAsia releases, and they looked pretty good.

This set will be awesome, I am sure of that, because many of these titles I already have, so I know. The set contains MACHINE GUN DRAGON (1978) starring karate legend Sonny Chiba and Japanese gangster (Yukuza) star Bunta Sagawa, a great pairing. FORCE: FIVE (1981) is directed by American chopsocky great Robert Clouse (Enter the Dragon, Game of Death) and co-stars Richard Norton and kickboxing legend Benny "the Jet" Urqiduez. SKINNY TIGER, FATTY DRAGON (1990) stars comedian Karl Maka and one of martial arts cinema's true heavyweights Sammo Hung. "Master killer" Gordon Liu is is very funny in (TWO) SHAOLIN KIDS IN HONG KONG(1994), the rest of this "comedy" is not. Donnie Yen stars in HIGH VOLTAGE (1995), the copy in VideoAsia's Donnie Yen Collection looked great, but had no English subtitles or dubbing, let's hope they've done something about that for this release. Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan, from the Once Upon a Time in China series, return in (DR. WEI IN THE) SCRIPTURE WITHOUT WORDS, a splended Indiana Jones wanna-be that should be seen by all martial arts fans and especially Li's legion of supporters.

The other four titles are all documentaries, of which only one I have seen. TOP FIGHTER 2 (1996) is a pleasing documentation of the woman of martial arts cinema, interviews with the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, Angela Mao, and Sophia Crawford, among others. JACKIE CHAN: THE KUNG FU YEARS, I would guess is about his early work in old school chopsocky flicks. MMA EXTREME, I know nothing about this one, but as a fan of mma, I looked foreward to seeing it. The last title is THE REAL BRUCE LEE 2, a movie that until VideoAsia's Dragon Immortal collection about a year, I didn't even know it existed."