Lie ri kuang feng ye huo

Every Angela Mao movie leaves fans of the genre hungry for more. Personally that means more of her martial arts skills and more of her beauty. This movie borders on starvation. The plot started out okay then added stuff that just did not matter and was not resolved. More important is the action. In the first hour there were times that Angela could have and should have taken off the stupid hat and veil and kicked some ass. Didn't happen. Yet the last 20 minutes or so (excusing the excessive acrobatics of the stunt double) were done just right. Perhaps they should have started at the end and filmed the beginning last. Anyway, a taste is all we get. Watch it anyway and think of what could have been.

SCORCHING SUN, FIERCE WINDS, WILD FIRE is a Taiwanese-filmed kung fu drama offering plenty of fights and six top-ranked performers, none of which quite make up for the meandering, confusing storyline. There are so many major characters and so many tangents followed that no one quite emerges as the hero of the story, which is supposed to be about warlords and rebels, bandits and soldiers in the early days of the China Republic. There is a plot thread about a search for the second half of a treasure map, but it's conveniently forgotten at various points. The period detail is so casual that much of the film looks like it could have taken place hundreds of years ago, yet when the head of a prison visits a chain gang, he is driven up in a late 1960s-model American car.

The most underused performer here is kung fu diva Angela Mao, who is visible in only three fights, two of them quite brief. She plays the daughter of a warlord and has a secret identity as the masked freedom fighter Violet, who rides the country righting wrongs and organizing rebels (similar to Zorro). Tien Peng plays a mysterious stranger who comes to town looking for the other half of the map. Lo Lieh and high-kicking Tan Tao Liang play prison inmates who escape and wind up in the thick of things. Chang Yi plays Master Wu, the security chief who does most of the fighting for the warlord. Jimmy Lee plays one of Violet's band. There are lots of other familiar kung fu faces in the cast.

Chang Yi was a great villain (EAGLE'S CLAW, TRAITOROUS, IMPERIAL SWORD, CHALLENGE OF DEATH, FATAL NEEDLES FATAL FISTS) and does such an efficient job fending off the good guys here that one can easily be forgiven for rooting for him. It's fun watching all these performers in constant fighting motion, mostly at outdoors locations, but one wishes there were some semblance of a real storyline and some reason to root for one side over the other.

ADDENDUM (9/8/10): I don't know where IMDb got the title, ANY WHICH WAY YOU PUNCH, but I've never seen this film referred to by that title anywhere else.

I usually don't care whether or not a kung fu movie has a good story, but the story is the reason I didn't like this movie. Everybody is looking for a map and it just doesn't make much sense. There are other parts to the story but it is mainly just mindless talking.

I suggest just fast forwarding to the last 20 minutes. Dorian Tan, Lo Lieh, Roc Tien Peng, Angela Mao Ying, and Chang Yi all get to show off, and Chang Yi is the only one I felt got enough fighting time. He is on fire in the final fights and he is the only reason this movie is worth watching.

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These movies made by smaller companies can't match the quality Golden Harvest put into Angela Mao's pictures. But being small is not an excuse for not making great movies as Golden Harvest's first movie Angry River also starring Angela Mao has highest quality for a '70s film.

This is a real old school kung fu movie offering not much more than the fight scenes. This type of kung fu movies are soon to be extinct as movies focusing more on interesting characters and unique ideas starts to fill the market.

Although the movie is made by a Hong Kong company, perhaps it was targeted for the Taiwan market. This movie has very strong semblance to movies made In Taiwan of the period.

I consider Angela Mao of this period to already be semi-retired. Her choice probably was correct, as mentioned above, the type of movies she grew up in became extinct around the time this movie was made.

Why they don't showcase the main star is a mystery to me, but I see this happening across the board with Taiwanese movies. This movie closely follows this erroneous format.

So the movie has lot of boring characters going through the motion which doesn't add anything to the story. There're just too many fighters (every fight seems to become a brawl) that makes this movie without focus. Angela Mao come sin at the very end, but mostly does nothing throughout the movie. Her actions are stylized, and lacks the sharpness from her earlier movies.

Better stick to the classics from Golden Harvest if you're an Angela Mao fan.