Les doigts d'acier qui tuent

On her happy hike Cheung Ching-Ching stumbles upon the scene of a slaughter. She flies down to investigate. She finds a belt buckle with a symbol on it. Cut to a bunch of people concerned that the prince has gone missing. They send out people to look. Cut to a hot chick in a palanquin caravan is observed by strangers and seems about to be robbed or worse. Cheung Ching-Ching stops at a tea house and meets four guys out looking for the prince and they bear the same belt buckle. Though they seem to be telling the truth she kills three out of four of them. Confused? I am. The story continues to be about determining the good guy from the bad guy and piles of false accusations. The action is below average. There is an attempt to mix up the fights with empty hands and various weapons but they all end up looking alike, are shot too close, lack power, or lack focus. Yet it did hold my attention and I abstained from the fast forward button. Still I rate it below average for the year and genre.

To start by saying the storyline and poster on this page do not relate to this movie. There are no ninjas in it, and I suspect 'Ninja Fist of Fire' is a different film. There is a prince hoping to 'gain his rightful place on the throne', but he is a frightened child with no fighting ability.

The setup is fairly typical. We have a group of good guys, an aged lord aiming to restore the prince, assisted by a reluctant knight and the star of the show, a wandering female mercenary (Ching-Ching Chang). We have the usual row of bad guys for them to knock over. The dubbing on the version I saw was better than some, the action kept moving (though sometimes in rather random directions) and I found it entertaining throughout. The fight scenes were well-enough done, but mostly not that inventive. There were quite a lot of battle-type scenes, rather than individual duels.

As for the more original aspects: In her fights, Chang often uses stratagems, like feigning injury, rather than just being better than the rest (which she clearly is - for once she's allowed to comprehensively defeat the supporting good guy). Her personality is more interesting than usual. Rather than yet another goody-goody, bent on revenge, she kills a group of soldiers gratuitously, is not above negotiating a huge payment from the friendly old lord, and her jokey, super-confident persona is great. 'It might be difficult for YOU,' she tells the main bad guy. 'For me it's easy as pie.' The supporting knight, rather than a stock hero, is surly, bad-tempered and reluctant throughout - a very nice touch. And while the main bad guy isn't a nice man, it seems he may well also intend to put the prince on the throne - for the advantage it will bring him no doubt.

This has a somewhat different feel from the standard wuxia flick and it's 90 minutes of very fun entertainment.