Review by ckormos1

The movie starts with animal cruelty mixed with two guys sparring. Kam Kong wants all the rebels killed. Chen Kuan-Tai's family is arrested while he is gambling and they are all killed. He is reduced to stealing the offerings at Shaolin. The monks offer him a place. It seems he has already learned most of their kung fu just by watching. He leaves the temple with the strategy "keep your friends close and your enemies closer". He becomes part of the corrupt officials that killed his family in order to get close enough to the general to kill the man at the top. Revenge is certainly the most common plot of martial arts movies and it might be the most common plot of all movies. I find it hard to understand why revenge is such a favorite plot in Chinese culture while at the same time the dominant Chinese philosophy is Buddhism and Buddhism has no place for revenge. "At what price revenge?" typically becomes a moral issue in the revenge plot. I would say never in the history of any martial arts revenge movie did revenge come at a higher price than in this movie. Fans of Chen Kuan-Tai must ask what was his best movie? "The Flying Guillotine" is certainly more well known but I consider this movie his best because he had more to do with it, he both acted and directed "The Iron Monkey" so I rate this as a ten of ten for Chen Kuan-Tai perfection.