A Andorinha Dourada

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.

Nominally a sequel to "Come Drink with Me," this film does bring back Cheng Pei-pei as the title swordswoman Golden Swallow...but, aside from that, it bears little apparent resemblance to King Hu's 1966 classic. "Golden Swallow" was one of those learning-as-you-go films for Chang Cheh, who went on to become the elder statesman of Hong Kong martial arts cinema. Chang hadn't quite realized his vision, but was finding his way.

Wang Yu plays a thoroughly unlikable antihero, Silver Roc, who's out for revenge against the murderer of his parents. (Or his teacher. Or something.) Golden Swallow and another woman are in love with Silver Roc; an upstanding warrior called Iron Whip (Lo Lieh) has the hots for Golden Swallow, but can see that he's losing out to Silver Roc. Yang Chih-ching (Wang Yu's nemesis from the previous year's hit "The One-Armed Swordsman") portrays the lead villain, Poison Dragon. With smoother choreography, the limitations of the dreary soap opera-style plot might have been easier to overlook, but the scenes of combat prove unsatisfactory. There are lots of fights, certainly, but they're awkwardly choreographed and filmed. Chang Cheh knew that he wanted to create long, bloody fight scenes with a lone hero facing virtually impossible odds, and from here on out he began to fine-tune his approach. Beginning with "The Return of the One-Armed Swordsman" (1969), the fights got better and better.

"Golden Swallow" was filmed in Japan, and the film's gorgeous outdoor photography may be its strongest feature. It's a necessary step in the development of Chang Cheh's directorial style, but will be of interest primarily to Wang Yu/Shaw Brothers completists.

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.

Golden Swallow was a sort of sequel to King Hu's classic Come Drink With Me and the name of the film. Golden Swallow is also the name of returning character by actress Cheng Pei Pei, but is more of a vehicle for Jimmy Wang Yu. This is much different from Come Drink With Me, but is also a classic in its own right. This was directed by Chang Cheh and is a very sharp looking, action packed and well put together swordplay film. Performances are excellent and Cheng Pei Pei becomes involved in a love triangle between the righteous Iron Whip( Lo Lieh) and the ruthless Silver Roc(Wang Yu). Together the three of them must fight off an evil kung fu clan that Silver Roc had ticked off, but targeted Golden Swallow. In this film Wang Yu shines as revenge seeking anti hero as he slaughters a slew of bad guys in a gory fashion. He lives in a brothel and is greatly admired and adored by the ladies that live there. He is a great swordsman indeed, if you get my drift. But, what a cool character and Wang Yu does a great job in carrying the film while stealing a little thunder from Cheng Pei Pei and Lo Lieh, who both did an excellent job as well. Lo Lei is best known for playing villains, but he is great here as the heroic and honorable Iron Whip. Golden Swallow is very bloody and action packed and a very good earlier film from the legendary Chang Cheh.

This is the seventh film from Chang Cheh. Still finding his style, here Cheh is clearly influenced by concurrent chambara films from Japan. While there are a number of signature Cheh style scenes in this film, there many scenes that are very experimental for him especially the opening fight that's cropped in unique ways. The photography is very good, especially the outdoor shots and the composition is better then in many of his later films.

While titled, "Golden Swallow", as others have noted, it really should be called "Silver Roc" or "Iron Whip vs. Flying Swords" or something like that. The character Golden Swallow is in the film but director Cheh is more interested in the disturbed swordsman played by Wang Yu. He gets to kill scores of bad guys in numerous extended scenes while the title character is involved in four short fights at the most.

Is the film good? Well it is entertaining for the most part if a bit gory (with lots of bright red paint). The martial arts are good but many fights scenes are shot with a shaky hand-held camera much like many Japanese movies from the same time. It's effective but muddies up the choreography if that's what you're looking for. The signature zoom lens Shaw style camera work doesn't really get going until the mid seventies. Shaw director Liu Chia Liang can be seen for a second or two as a villainous swordsman.