Trinity Goes East

TRINITY GOES EAST is an odd, no-budget Taiwanese martial arts film shot by Robert Tai, the man who originally worked with the Shaw Brothers before going into his own distinctive brand of low-budget nonsense. This movie was shot in Vietnam and features an international cast. Bizarrely, the aim of the film is to be an unofficial sequel to the 'Trinity' series of films starring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, with two lookalikes playing the lead roles.

For a film so obviously made on the cheap this really shouldn't work, but I found something oddly endearing about it. Whether it's the non-stop action scenes, the cheesy humour, or the wooden acting of the 'gwailo' leads, TRINITY GOES EAST provides memorable entertainment, even if it is for all the wrong reasons. The movie is heavily indebted to other, better films, and occasionally proves a riotous spoof such as the Lone Wolf & Cub homage scenes.

One of the main characters is a piglet and watching the actors chasing it about is naturally amusing. Steve Tartalia is the Bud Spencer alike and suitably hefty and imposing in the part, while the Terence Hill role goes to Toby Russell, who is pretty good for a non-actor. Russell is the son of Ken and a well-known British martial arts expert. In support we get old kung fu star John Liu and Sky Dragon, the cheap Bruce Lee imitator from the 1990s.

Trinity Goes East is unquestionably very low budget - but it does boast a good, lightweight Spaghetti-Western-esque soundtrack.

Featuring scenes parodying Lone Wolf and Cub (one of the main characters pushes a piglet, that is sometimes an obvious puppet, around in a booby-trapped babycart), Trinity Goes East is an okay kung fu no-brainer that stars Steve Tartalia. Tartalia is one of those 'gwailo' actors/fighters who used to be frequently featured as a western bad dude in such Hong Kong films as Operation Condor and Once Upon a Time in China.

When the notorious master thief Trinity steals the dragon-ball from Shaolin Temple, Bambino from Interpol get send for to bring him in. Together with his pig Kolonel and Kung Fu Master Wong Rei he gets his hand on Trinity, but there is no sign of the ball. As soon as another gang gets involved to get the Dragonball Bambino begins to wonder why this worthless artifact is so important.

The storyline is simple, the way of acting is bad, the pig is worse (and he plays a big part in it), but the English voices are worst. But still I've seen this movie a couple of times because I like martial arts, and there are some skillful moments in this film. I can definitely say that the group of ninjas are some well trained martial artists.

So I voted a 4, 0 for everything that makes a movie a movie, and an 8 for the martial arts.