Fo zhang luo han quan

You have seen these kinds of movies before. Like many kung-fu movies at this time, it combines laugh out loud humor, with many fights. What brings this movie up above the many clones of this time is the director, Yuen Woo Ping. The man that brought you the fights from The Matrix and Fist of Legend, brings you a movie with some of the most amazing fight choreography ever filmed. In many ways this movie is the superior to Fist of Legend, when it comes to the fights. There are more of them, they are much more fluid, they do not have the sped up film of FOL, and they are just so much fun. The story itself is not much to talk about, but the actors seem to enjoy their role, and there really are some fun moments. If you like any of these late 70's early 80's kung fu movies, you must get this one. It is a step above the rest, and really should be more popular then it is.

This is the best kung fu film ever, no doubt. Absurdly complex fight sequences, kung fu monks, stunning fisting scenes. Don't ask me what the plot was, I just know this film has to be seen to be believed. The guy who did the fight scenes also engineered the fight sequences in The Matrix, but this film is light years beyond Keanu Reeves. It HAS to be seen.

You can tell this is one of Woo-Pings earlier works because there is very little wire work done. The fights are all of course expertly choreographed though. The movie itself has an interesting storyline, or at least as interesting as a kung fu movie from 1980 gets. Some of the fighting shows good demonstrations of fist versus palm styles. The DVD version of the movie looks good for the most part, with only a few grains and does have a line going down the left side of the screen for the first 15 minutes of the movie. Its not enough to distract you though and the only other really bad part is a thirty second scene in the dark where there is a lot of grain on the film.

Many Westerners feel that Buddhism ought to be a "perfect" religion - everyone adhering to it ought to be some sort of saint or savant. Having been a Buddhist for 15 years, and having spent considerable amount of time with Buddhists of many different sects, I am sorry to report that we are pretty much like all other Earthlings, and our religion is a faith in the possibility of improvement, not the achievement of perfection.

Yuen Woo-Ping's "Buddhist Fist is probably his masterwork of the "old School" Hong Kong action film era, but it may also be his finest dramatic achievement in any era. Without spoiling the film, I warn the reader that the film hinges on a cultural anomaly; it is possible in the East to be committed to a Buddhist monastery as a child without having spiritually converted to it. This means pretty much in the East what it once did in the West, when Roman monasticism was at its height: repression, rage, hypocrisy. These are clearly not vices Westerners like to associate with Buddhism, and they aren't particularly admitted in the East, either. Consequently, for Yuen Woo Ping to make this the core issue of this drama took considerable courage on his part, and it shows forth in the dedicated acting of its leading performers.

There are weak points to the film, to be sure: Yuen's father, Simon Yuen, of "Drunken Master" fame, died during the making of the film (as apparently he did during the making of at least a half-dozen others!), and a beefy part for him had to be trimmed and rewritten for completion by someone else; this also weakens some of the oddball humor that some viewers find annoying about the film, but which, taken on its own terms, is quite enjoyable. (I suppose one really has to have a grasp on Cantonese theatrical traditions to appreciate this.) But the core drama of the film, despite all the stereotypes en-framing it, remains strong after more than twenty years, because of the myriad conflicting human emotions it evokes.

Oh, and of course, the martial arts happen to be absolutely exquisite in choreography and performance.

But it is the drama that finally preserves this film - and I expect it will do so for another generation or two.

I have been a fan of martial arts films for ages; I was always slightly disappointed that the emphasis would often be on ridiculously convoluted plots rather than being focused on the fights themselves. Thankfully this is not the case with "Buddhist Fist"; the plot centres around a pair of childhood friends who go their separate ways in their teens, a few years later one is recalled home after events transpire in his home village. He is now a hairdresser (a bad one) & in traditional Kung-fu cinema style has a clumsy sidekick in tow; whilst the other friend is a Buddhist monk at the village temple. Not wanting to spoil the film for anybody, that's all I will reveal, but essentially it is the tale of what occurs to the two friends as the village is manipulated by the bad guy, imaginatively titled "Big-small feet" (no prizes for guessing why!)

The stand-out moments from this title have to be the astoundingly choreographed fight scenes...I mean these sequences are AMAZING: it's as simple as that. I have seen more martial arts films than I've had hot dinners (almost)and these scenes are something else!! The fighting borders on dancing in places, it is so technical and astounding to watch, I mean I didn't know human beings were capable of such things. Also worthy of mention are the comedy moments; I never really liked the slapstick elements of martial arts films, like the ones in Jackie Chan films which are always way OTT(with sound effects to match), but they really work here...especially the hunchback "poisoner" whose special technique is "Holy Ghost Claw". Plus I challenge anybody not to laugh when the compulsory Master/Sensei pulls out his bag of tricks to upstage the youngsters with his moves..."Strength is improved: by form breathing..." Classic!!

Lots of these kinds of films are too heavy on the fights without justification. Films like "Mystery of chess boxing" for example, where there is a brief introduction similar to the rest, character gets wronged by indiscriminate bad guy, gets taught Kung-fu by a "master", becomes an unstoppable force for good, wins in the end...in that order. Buddhist fist on the other hand, balances out the fights with just the right amount of story in between & even attempts to provide sensible reasons for each encounter, instead of the usual "you tripped me up in the street; now defend yourself or die!". Each fight gets more and more frenetic until the energy-fuelled finale, which has to be seen to be believed.

There is no real nudity, no real gore, no romance element, but if these are the reasons you watch this kind of film, you're doing it for the wrong reasons IMHO; it's about the Kung-fu and the physical feats of the actors. Definitely in my top 5 martial arts films of all time, a lost gem from the hugely talented Yuen Wo Ping stable of the far east!