Jin yan zi

Kung-fu at its innovative best and one of the finest the genre has to offer. The Shaw Brothers produced "Golden Swallow" mixes a melancholy romance with violent martial arts caught by its handsomely earthy direction and inventively novel camera placement during the excitingly expansive set-pieces. The dazzling imagery in some sequences is marvellously projected, like the vigorous fighting craftsmanship in the woods and the vivid colour plateau accompanying it. The arresting sword fights are quick, ruthless and meticulous without a drop of sweat being spilt… however blood is plentiful in its many awesome showdowns! The story's groundwork is quite simple, but well-told with its ominous edge and suitably paced… even though I did find some of the editing in between sequences to be rather jumpy. The score is kinetic, but elegantly impulsive. There are illustratively able performances from the likes of Pei-pei Cheng (who provides one strong character), Yu Wang, Lieh Lo, Hsin Yen Chao and Chia-Liang Liu. Wang is quite memorable as the unstoppably cold-blooded warrior Silver Roc that really has a bone to pick, while in the quest to find his true love.

This film is a perfect example of why Cheng Pei-pei's characterizations were years ahead of their time. She was a truly independant and strong female role model without sacrificing any femininity. The closest contemporary I can think of would be Michelle Yeoh, yet Cheng did it back in the day and in some ways paved the way for stars like Yeoh.

There is a scene in this film which illustrates this point well. Cheng's character, Golden Swallow, is hurrying to save her friend's from killing each other but she's dragging another female character with her. The other woman does the cliche twist-the-ankle-while-running-and-look-pitiful move we have seen in in every cheesy chase scene. Cheng turns to her and gives her a look that says "What is WRONG WITH YOU? Why are you so helpless?! Get up and RUN!" before she practically drags her to her feet.

THE GIRL WITH THE THUNDERBOLT KICK (aka GOLDEN SWALLOW, 1968) is a Shaw Bros. costume swordplay drama notable for co-starring the studio's top male action star, Jimmy Wang Yu, with the studio's then-reigning swashbuckling diva Cheng Pei Pei (THE THUNDERING SWORD). Wang Yu plays the notorious killer Silver Roc and Cheng plays his childhood sweetheart Golden Swallow, whom he hasn't seen in years (a reprise of a character the same actress played in King Hu's COME DRINK WITH ME, 1966). Golden Swallow follows Roc's trail of blood and is accompanied by Golden Whip Hand (Lo Lieh), who is in love with her but helps her track down Silver Roc. Midway through the film they all meet, but Silver Roc quickly challenges Whip Hand to a duel after the latter condemns Roc for an earlier instance of cold-blooded killing. That's pretty much the whole plot and it takes a long time getting to the final duel.

There are plenty of swordfights here, but they're fairly stylized, with lots of leaping around, twirling of swords, soft blows, and unconvincing fighting skills. Cheng Pei Pei has great screen presence, but she's more of a dancer than a fighter. There's an undertone of unrequited love that's rather poignant at times. Following this film Wang Yu turned to a harder-edged brand of martial arts film with THE CHINESE BOXER (1970), generally considered the first pure kung fu film.

ADDENDUM (12/24/18): Watching this film again on the Dragon Dynasty DVD, in Mandarin with English subs. and the original music score, makes a world of difference. It's a beautiful film, a sweeping love story, with action scenes a dramatic by-product, and great performances by all concerned, especially the three leads. I was also struck by the breathtaking cinematography by Pao Hsueh Li, shot on both lavish studio sets and picturesque mountain locations. I regret that the above review wasn't as enthusiastic, but it was based on watching a pan-and-scan Cantonese language VHS tape with plastered-on music cues from a James Bond soundtrack.

This movie quite surprised me. Not only because it's such a great one but because I liked it even better than its predecessor "Da zui xia" as well.

"Da zui xia" was already a surprising good movie, that besides was a genre defining one. It was one of the first 'modern' Kung Fu movies, with plenty of sword fights and action in it. But this is perhaps why I liked this sequel better; it's even more action filled! Not only does the movie feature some amazing and spectacular fight choreography in it but it's made even more spectacular and amazing thanks to the way it got shot. It has some absolutely wonderful cinematography in it, especially during all of its fight scenes. I also quite liked the hand-held camera-work during some of the sword-fights. I'm not too sure about but I believe that this is something I have never seen before in a genre movie like this.

Because the movie is so action packed, it becomes a truly entertaining one to watch, with a pleasant fast pace to it as well. The story still finds some room to throw in a love-story as well but it does this in a quite original way. It's a sort of love triangle love-story that plays out nicely for its story.

The character played by Pei-pei Cheng gets pushed somewhat more to the background this time but it's OK, since the movie brings in a lot of more awesome characters to replace her with. What I like about the character's is that you're constantly changing your opinions about them. Some of them start out as villains, who eventually turn out to be good guys after all.

It's not featuring a that complicated or well written story but it's serving its purpose well for the movie. It takes the movie to lots of beautiful looking places, where we meet all kinds of awesome characters, who often get into a fight with each other. Seriously, I can't see how someone could not like this movie, even when you aren't very familiar with the genre yet.

It's simple entertainment but oh so well made and brought to the screen!

9/10

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Reviewed and complained about The Man with the Iron Fists a couple of nights ago, and thought that throwback martial arts movie could have been good even with a muddled storyline if it had just had neat action and no distractingly bad digital effects.

Golden Swallow feels like that hypothetical martial arts movie with a messy narrative yet still delivering on the action and martial arts movie charms. Of course, it's not a throwback, and was made at a time when the martial arts genre in Hong Kong was thriving, but it still goes to show that an action movie like this can work simply by having good... well, action.

It feels like there's almost more time spent on action scenes than there is time spent on non-action scenes. I'm a sucker for any martial arts sequences, but ones where one person fights through a dozen or more other people with ease I'm particularly a sucker for, and there's some stuff like that here.

The melodramatic romance is a bit underwhelming, and the story is all over the place, but the fighting is exciting and fun, and that's the most important thing. Great fighting and a good story might make a martial arts movie great, which isn't the case here... but the movie's at least good, thanks to it having frequent and entertaining fights.