Le Vengeur

I had hoped, and thought, that this movie would be somewhat better than the earlier movies of Jackie Chan's impressive career. However, I was sadly disappointed to find out that it was not to be.

The story in "To Kill with Intrigue" ("Jian Hua Yan Yu Jiang Nan") was sort of trying to be everything at once, trying to accomplish a lot, but just ending up in a sort of strange confusion and semi-coherent story. Which made it not overly enjoyable, and quickly had my attention drifting elsewhere, and only pay attention to the movie with half an eye.

And part of the lack of interest in it, on my part, is that the DVD I acquired from Amazon only had a horrible English dubbed language track. I could not even if my life depended on it understand why English dubbing is appealing or acceptable to anyone? It is poorly done, it totally destroyed the feeling (or mood) of the movie, and it just makes it come off as a very low budget production.

Now for the good parts about "To Kill with Intrigue", well you have Jackie Chan in a very unusual role (if you compare it to his other roles throughout his career), as he is not really the goody two-shoes that he usually plays. Plus this movie doesn't have the usual slapstick comedy either. It is a serious movie, and the martial arts in it was actually quite nicely choreographed and executed, whereas many of his movies before this one, the martial arts was horrible staged and rigid.

This movie sort of has a weird mutated mixture of traditional, old Chinese warrior movies mixed with Chinese Opera-like characters. Not really sure what director Wei Lo was aiming for here.

"To Kill with Intrigue" is the type of movie that you watch if you are a hardcore fan of Jackie Chan or old Chinese cinema. For me, this was not one of Jackie Chan's better movie, despite it being a venture away from the slapstick comedy. If the movie only had been with its original language track, it would at least have scored a 4/10 rating, but now has to settle for a 3/10 rating from me.

It is big mystery why this film was shown in Japanese movie theatre although his other far better films in 70's were not. A masked strong Kung-Fu woman became the teacher of Jackie, and she burns Jackie's face and lets him eat stones because of her mad love for him.So Jackie became to look like a zombie or something at last.I felt like seeing horror movie.I remember actions in this film was not bad, but I don't wanna see it again so never mind anyway.

This movie essentially begins with a beautiful handmaiden by the name of Qian-Qian (Ling Lung Yu) eagerly telling her rich nobleman lover "Lei Shao-Fung" (Jackie Chan) that she is pregnant with his child. But rather than being delighted with this news he rudely brushes her off and sends her on her way. Crushed over this unexpected rejection of her Qian-Qian leaves the household she had been working at and runs away. Meanwhile, Lei Shao-Fung has returned to his home and informs his father that an elite group of assassins has targeted the entire family and that they are all in serious trouble. No sooner does he tell them this then they suddenly appear out of nowhere and kill off everyone in the family except Lei Shao-Fung who they thought was dead. When he recovers he sees one of the female assassins named "Ding Can-Ren" (Feng Hsu) standing near him and catching her off-guard holds a sword to her throat. However, rather than killing her he decides to spare her life in exchange for information on why his family was targeted. Upon telling him she then escapes only to follow his every footstep from that point on. The story then shifts to Qing-Qing who meets a stranger by the name of "Jin-Chuan" (Le Lung Shen) who saves her from a small group of bandits and subsequently offers her his protection until she decides what she wants to do next. What she doesn't know is that Jin-Chuan was sent by Lei Shao-Fung to look after her and that she was only sent away because he was afraid that she might suffer the same fate as the rest of his family. Unfortunately, Jin-Chuan is not who he says he is and has his own plans for Qing-Qing. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an intricate film which suffered from too many diverse subplots that didn't flow smoothly from one to the next. Throw in a lot of swordplay and acrobatics and the end result was a rather strange film which was difficult to follow at times. At least, it was for me.

An amazingly horrible film, kung fu corniness at it's best. Everything from the names of the characters: "Chin Chin" which is Japanese for "penis", which is awesome because there are tons of variations in the movie. "All you care about is your chin-chin!" (Actual piece of dialog) The set designs are beautiful and the cinematography catches some great shots sporadically in the film. The fight scenes themselves are just thick with super human hijinks and cheap camera tricks. Altogether, a hilarious piece of kung fu dung.

Not for the serious kung-fu fan, more for the casual-bad-movie-fanatic.

Yeehaw, The Lazy Southerner

Well, Jackie Chans best films are from 1978 and after , and this film was made in 1977. This film is just ok. It has a grainy picture , like some low budget wannabee bruce lee movies have. Although this picture is directed by Lo Wei (fists of fury, the chinese connection).

This film has Jackie chan as a man who tries to get his girlfriend back from the governer.

In america this film, would probably be rated PG-13 for ,mild violence.