7/10
Those martial arts stars twinkled in 1980s all right
17 October 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Without martial arts sequences it would be 5 out of 10 at most on IMDb, no doubt. But the flick does have some amazing brawls as a tasty dish in different parts of the film.

The Chinese humour here may be called moronic but being that bad it does not spoil the movie. Suggest that one should watch this movie in Chinese with subtitles. Maybe being drunk will also help. The way that little fat "bugger" (as another character calls him) speaks is awesome. As if singing some idiotic childish song - quite a moving intonation. Lexically his speech is idiotic as well. The way Sammo looks in this movie also adds some crazy flavour: he is so baby-faced here and so hurtful at times (with his kicks, jumps, and all). Richard Norton is ridiculous as well with his "Excuse me" and trademark "Painful?" phrases together with childish face expressions, though he has a beard.

In a few words this movie is an orient extravaganza that is quite more enjoyable than anything "blockbusterish" of today's cinema.

The things that spoiled (a bit) the movie for me: voodoo doll topic (it gets too far), outtakes on the DVD (not funny, not cool - plain uninteresting and dull, thankfully these scenes are not in the movie), and little fighting (yes, really tough but little - would be happy with an additional 15 minutes brawl between everybody engaged in the production). The movie could be also shorter for the sake of insane pace - 70 minutes of this stupidity would be nice.

Almost forgot: 1) that Biao's jump at the factory is still in my mind's eye (he made the backward splits and kneed the opponent in the back grabbing him by the hair and thrusting forward through the glass - pure ecstasy); 2) the scene where one of those stupid old fellows is harassing his two friends with the fingers and finally slaps them with that helicopter move hitting the first friend up the chin and the other - upon the head (re-watched this dumb scene a number of times - still cannot believe my eyes while it looks so childish and phoney); 3) the music becomes to the movie perfectly - it resembles the one used in the old Soviet cinema for kids; 4) the moronic ending with the endless crowd of people coming out of the elevator makes me smile real wide.

A ridiculous 7 out of 10 - forget the manners and you'll love it, but do not re-watch it too often because it can make you stupider... Thanks for attention.
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