Le Héros magnifique

For the fan of the classic Hong Kong kung fu movie, this one is just plain fun. Sammo Hung is comic, fierce, expressive, and a joy to watch in action. Yuen Biao is conniving, devious, and mean. The action is wild, the kung fu is fast and furious, the stunts are convincing, all in all a great chop-sockey type movie. If you enjoy this sort of thing, give it a try!

This a great Kung Fu film based on legendary historical figure Butcher Wing, played by Sammo Hung. The choreography is brilliant and powerful - the action sequences are full of energy and ferocity. The amount of talent within this film is phenomenal. You have Sammo, Yuen Biao, Hoi San Lee, Wei Pei, and the awesome Lam Ching-Ying.

The drama in this film swiftly elevates as particular gruesome events take place within Butcher Wing's own house, thus drawing attention from a rival Kung Fu School led by Hoi San Lee's character - armed with the deadly and quite hilarious "Cosmic Palm" style.

The clash between the two schools is cataclysmic, with some of the best choreography ever recorded on film. Yuen Biao vs. Lam Ching-Ying is of particular quality. Also, the drunken beggar character adds some welcome comic relief as well as some of the funniest action sequences I have seen. This character (resembling legendary Master So Hai, and to originally be played by Simon Yuen), acts as a catalyst for the film.

This is one of the best Sammo Hung projects that is available to see. His Kung Fu seems to be at it's peak, and the choreography really is ground-breaking - at least check out the calligraphy scene!

This has everything you want from a classic kung fu film - lots of superbly choreographed action, plenty of cheesy but fun humour, and even a reasonable plot, which actually gets quite nasty at times. The fighting really is the main reason to see it though, it really is something to behold. Plenty of somersaulting, using props, and crazy moves with ridiculous names, theres even a bit of weapon fighting too. The film never gets the coverage or respect it deserves unfortunately, but if you read this, I hope it will move you to watch it, love it, and tell all your friends. Trust me, if you're into old style kung-fu along similar lines to Drunken Master, you're in for a treat.

I'm usually very picky about which films I buy for my private film collection, because I have limited amount of space and no free spot for bad films, so I guess it was a bit of a gamble buying the film box from Eureka Video with three of Sammo Hung's films. But, then again, with Sammo, you know you'll get entertainment and some good kung fu. And kung fu you got, from beginning to end, you can't really complain about this film not having enough fights, it's filled with it from beginning to end.

So why do I only give it a 7 when the fight scenes are so great? The fight scenes alone are 9-10 points worthy and I was entertained all the time a fight started. The story however was shifting in tone all the time, from light-hearted comedy to brutal murder. Growing up with film from US and England, I guess I have a limited view of how comedies and actions should work. Although, I've seen quite a few Hong Kong action comedies from the 80s and they did get less violent for the next decade. Just like the other films in the Sammo-box, there's some deaths that just doesn't feel necessary compared to what the rest of the story is.

The film also take place in an alternate universe where people are slow-minded and easily fooled. Obviously it wouldn't have been a film if people would've explained stuff to the end, instead Sammo beats up a stranger because someone else called that person a thief. That person then tell his master that's a kung fu fighter that Sammo called him a "phony" and lots of other bad things about his school. The Kung Fu master then goes to Sammo's Master and begins to fight him even before asking if any of it is true. Sure, we get an amazing fight scene involving a brush. But looking through the film, there are so many liars that get away easily while some other people end up in brutal fights because of them.

I really loved the relation between the drunk beggar and Sammo's character and reminded me of Drunken Master (same director). His comments during the fights as well as his silly grin made me chuckle a lot throughout the film. I also think that the titles of this film and another film from the box, The Iron-Fisted Monk (1977), had some strange titles to them. We didn't see Sammo do much butchery at all in this film, just carrying some pigs in the beginning of the film. And the Iron-fisted monk, there wasn't really a specific iron-fist through the film, just lots of normal punches. At least this film had some more special fists/palms to it and would probably make more sense if it was called "The Iron-fisted butcher" or something like that.

A slight spoiler ahead - but was the father of the rapist/murder son really a bad guy? All he wanted was to avenge his goddaughter and son for their deaths, and it looked to me that he never really got anything explained to him what really happened.

Don't think too much about the story while watching the film, enjoy the fights.

Without the aid of their buddy Jackie Chan, the icons of Hong Kong cinema demonstrates that kung fu comedy exists before and after Jackie appeared on the scene. Magnificent Butcher is one of the many examples of great Kung Fu minus the action superstar, the story follows many strands of the Kung Fu genre with masters and schools coming against eachother, complete with climactic battles and a heavy dose of boys own humour that is the template of this succesful era of kung fu. What makes this one of the greats is its simple charm, Yuen Woo Ping breathes so much life into this movie by treating the audience to a feast of distintly Hong Kong movie ideas.

Only in Hong Kong action could their contain a scene whereby a characters uses the infamous farting technique to shame his opponent, or a blind begger mistakes a water vase being held by Samo as a toilet, and in the same movie contain an attempted rape, knives being plunged into the stomachs and the lead actor smashing his enemies head with a pray stone in extra slow-mo. Only in Hong Kong would a director attempt to gel these distinctly contrasting scenes and attempt to convey a cohesive story. And in Magnificent Butcher we have something close to success, as Samo effectively conveys emotions of comedy and extreme outrage in the blink of an eye. What is strange is how quickly these charaters forget their injustices and gripes which eventually lead to the climactic fight sequence where everything ends in triumpth, as we the viewer dispel with the plot and relish the movies subsequent closing. Magnificent Butcher, or Lin shi rong, is part of the era of Hong Kong movie making whereby anything that makes the audience laugh and cry for its duration was deemed a success, as the emphasis of movies made in this era was fun twinned with an element of truth, and this calloboration between Yuen Woo Ping and Samo sets the precedent for nearly everything that has been great about Hong Kong cinema ever since.

Kung fu comedy at its most shameless, an undeniable classic for fans of Hong Kong cinema.