Le Maître de Taekwondo

John Woo's first effort as a director and boy does he pull of a good job. Starring James Tien and Carter Wong the two begin as friends yet are torn apart by the enemy and the heart of a girl. The two manage to set aside their differences to overcome the enemy in a dramatic finale where the two defeat a whole entourage of enemy's. The movie follows a brilliant storyline and the acting in it is superb successfully conveying emotions and building the characters up well. Their is a number of fights and the finale is probably some of the greatest kung-fu i've ever seen. The stars Carter Wong and especially James Tien are on their top form and this is defiantly a recommended film if you can get your hands on it.

It would be easy to poke fun at some of the more ridiculous aspects of "The Dragon Tamers": the awkward all-girl mud wrestling scene that opens the film, for example, or the fact that Carter Wong would not have found it necessary even in 1975 to travel all the way from Hong Kong to Seoul to learn tae kwon do, since the Korean fighting art was world-famous and widely taught by that time. The point is that the film is packed with well-choreographed scenes of combat. Realistically, that's the only expectation the viewer is going to have, and that expectation is generously met. We're talking *lots* of fights here: Wong and fellow male lead James Tien go up against veritable armies of black-cloaked villains (led by Kim Ji-Joo and Yeung Wai) to prevent one especially disreputable tae kwon do school from bullying all the other schools. (Or something. The motivation of the villains is never really made clear, and the obligatory Z-grade English dubbing doesn't help.) And they're visceral, exciting fights, with opponents getting taken down by flying kicks to the head or painful-looking knifehand strikes to the throat.

There's not much reason for the presence of all the peripheral female characters (not even the final opponent whom Wong and Tien must confront after they've beaten all the male villains), and fans of John Woo will find little evidence of his signature directorial style in this early effort. If you crave hard-hitting fights by the dozen, however, you'll find them in "The Dragon Tamers." It's a fun viewing experience for fans of the genre.

Starring James Tien and Carter Wong, the two begin as friends yet are torn apart by the enemy and the heart of a girl.

This was only John Woo's second effort as a director, but kung fu fans have noted "this looks like a mature Woo picture, with lots of zooming shots and liberal use of slow motion." The same person says, "Though Woo is credited as the screenwriter, one gets the sense that perhaps Golden Harvest insisted the female-oriented scenes (complete with mud wrestling and catfights in a bathhouse) be placed in to increase the 'production value'.

I hardly claim to be an expert on Woo or martial arts films. Heck, I can barely even claim to be a fan, having seen more than the average person but far less than the average kung fu fan. I will just have to take this critic's word for it.