Ming yue dao xue ye jian chou

I remember the last days of the Chinatown cinemas here in New York City. One theater, the Music Palace, had a lock on Shaw films and you could almost always count on a double bill with at least one martial art film playing. One of the unique qualities of the theater was that patrons would talk throughout the films, get up, walk around or go and buy one of the numerous Chinese snacks available in the theater. Every now and then I would see a film where you could do this and not lose the story or really miss anything. While I have never seen Pursuit of Vengeance before, this is certainly one of those films.

Ti Lung plays a cool fighter who wields an odd tonfa/sword. He resembles the Man with No Name from the Leone westerns in a way. He enters a tavern gambling house and causes a stir by ordering goat's milk instead of wine. Some local ruffians decide to pick on him but are interrupted by a young man who brings a goat in to the tavern. The ruffians turn their attention to the young man who turns out to be a very skilled open hand fighter. The fight finished Ti Lung leaves the tavern but runs into a group of men who demand that he attend a gathering at Wan Ma clan mansion. Ti Lung refuses but the arrival of six coffins destined for the six men invited to the mansion intrigues him so he decides to go. The young man is invited as well. At the mansion they are informed that it's the 20th anniversary of the death of hero Bai and Bai's killer has returned to exterminate the Wan Ma. Among the six is the killer, or is he?

A very convoluted plot with lots of characters fighting and dying. The film's pluses are some unique scenes, the opening in the tavern is entertaining, good art direction and interesting main characters with a sense of humor. Lo Lieh joins the cast about half way thru and lends his talents. The drawbacks are some very choppy editing, creaky camera-work and some mediocre fights. Nearly every action scene has dozens of extras running back and forth, in front of the camera! That's not to say that there isn't some excellent fight choreography but choreographer Tang Chia has done better elsewhere. Lot's of unusual weapons although.

Fun but not best from director Yuen Chor.

I discovered that this was a sequel to "The Magic Blade", and decided to give Fu Hung-Hsueh (Ti Lung) another shot, as I still thought he was an interesting character to watch.

"Pursuit of Vengeance" fixes a lot of the problems I had with "Blade", as I felt Fu was too smart, with his allies never catching up. We get a lot more input this time around with his co-star characters Ye Kai (Lau Wing) and Lu Xiao Jia (Lo Lieh), with all three of them combining for a hilarious and competent trio, solving the complex murder mystery they were unfortunately invited into.

Like "The Magic Blade", Fu Hung-Hsueh continues to appear to have a hand in every corner of the world with how much knowledge he has, which made me long to know more of his backstory, and "Vengeance" provides us with a little bit on Fu's history.

While the film starts off incredibly strong with creative dialogue at the tavern scene, and continues with it's eerie suspense of what exactly the Wan Ma School wants with the mysterious strangers, including Fu and Ye-Kai, that entered the town recently, the overall plot starts to degrade rapidly. The only saving grace was the very relieving comedy from the three co-stars, especially when Lo Lieh's character enters the fray.

I could no longer take getting jerked around by the mystery our characters were supposed to solve, and skipped to the end. I don't recommend this film, but if you can get to the end with a little bit of context, that would make it worth it. It's pretty funny.