Po jie

If you like a woman getting her revenge with Kung Fu skills and scorpions this is the movie for you!

It's entertaining and well made with awesome kung Fu scenes.

This is a high quality classic that may be said as Golden Harvest's "Five Deadly Venoms", and in this movie character Angela Mao portrays actually uses venom from the scorpion to do away with her enemies.

Angela Mao plays the role of an orphan who was brought up in Shaolin temple. As she matured, she became skilled in kung fu, but also not fit in terms of behavior to stay at the temple. She makes her life as a pick pocket in the streets, but she's also after the four men who killed her father, and sent her mother to jail.

The usual high quality visuals, and intricate story development of Golden Harvest's movie is evident here. Along with "The Tournament" this movie features the best of Angela Mao's kung fu skills. After seeing this movie, it's evident that she is something very special in terms of star quality, and the martial arts, and acrobatic skills. There is no one I can think of that has these qualities to the degree she has even to this day.

The movie is definitely a kung fu movie classic, made extra special by the presence of Angela Mao.

This is what I'm talking about!! From the get go, the film is dark, grim, and the common HK 'revenge' theme, BUT this is how you take revenge!

Angela is great in this one; fighting to the point where she won't rest until the enemy's blood is spilt. It's great: no phony sparring or sparing the enemy. Guys are practically slammed by Angela's hard kicks (love those sound effects!) and her movements flow so smoothly that it just adds so much more to the fights. Her facial expressions are best when fierce and enraged. Even Sammo gets bruised and abused. She's too dangerous for Shaolin temple while her foes cower in fear. Broken Oath is a fine work from kung fu's Deadly China Doll.

When it comes to Hong Kong action films, my tastes usually go to those movies made in the 1980s or later. But several months ago I got in my hands a DVD box set of 1970s Angela Mao kung fu films, and I've found some of them to be decent, "Broken Oath" being one of them. The movie has several things that make it rise above the typical 1970s Hong Kong kung fu film. The first and most obvious is Angela Mao herself - she's in good form here, showing her trademark spunk and getting a showcase of her fighting talents, including some scenes involving weapons. Also, the movie looks pretty good - it's obvious this movie had a higher than usual budget, resulting in good sets and costumes, as well as good photography and widescreen compositions.

However, the movie has a few significant problems. There are some lengthy segments where things slow down considerably, notably the beginning - it takes a while for Angela to hit the road to revenge. Also, the ending is kind of abrupt. The biggest problem, however, is with the fight sequences. The last half hour or so does have some decent fights, but the hour before the movie really skips on the action. In that first hour or so, believe it or not there's not one fight that lasts more than thirty or so seconds. I stuck with the movie being in a somewhat patient mood at the time, but I think some impatient viewers will bail on the movie in its first half for not delivering the goods early on.

"Broken Oath" is not prime kung fu viewing, but if you're patient, the movie does eventually deliver enough entertainment to make it worth watching. And it's certainly better than a lot of other 1970s Hong Kong kung fu films.