Shi san mei

Personally, I blame The Forbidden Kingdom and Kung Fu Panda for my fondness of martial arts flicks. But in a thoughtful way, and after watching the BBC documentary "Wild China," I am starting to love China and Japan. Whenever I am at Wal-Mart, I start buying martial arts films on DVD from Fusian Films; I have already bought four.

In this classic martial arts film (featuring plenty of swordplay and fast-paced fighting), An Chi, a young, clumsy, skiddish scholar, was taking money to bail out his falsely accused father. Yu Feng, a red-clad swordswoman, saved him from the robbers. She is seeking revenge for her parents' deaths, saving her 12 sisters from an evil lord, and using them to create her own personal harem. He wants Yu Feng to train him in martial arts, but he becomes more interested in the daring "13th Sister," who sees him as a nerd. She even tries to set him up with the daughter of a family they rescued.

So, after seeing this picture a few times, I felt it was terrific, with fast-paced action and a bit of comedy. And I don't have a favorite scene (as I said many times), because I love the whole film from beginning to end.

One of a handful of movies directed by prolific Taiwan-based producer Wong Cheuk-hon, "The Young Avengers" is average at best. What makes it worthwhile for hardcore fans of Asian martial arts cinema is that it's a very purely Chinese wuxia (literally "martial heroes" or "martial chivalry") film, completely devoid of Western influence. That means lots of stagey-looking swordplay, elaborate sets and costumes, etc. Wong seems to have realized that the choreography was this film's weak point, so he spices up the heavier fights near the end with some bloodletting--including one particularly effective scene in which a villain is raised clean off his feet and pinned to a wall by his heroic opponent's sword. The minimally informative subtitles (burned onto the print) fail to address many of the nuances of the story, but what we have here is a standard revenge tale with stereotypical characters. A milquetoast scholar (An Ping) and a fierce swordswoman (Ting Ying) discover that they have a common enemy: a corrupt general (veteran character actor Ma Chi, Taiwan's answer to Ku Feng) who has imprisoned the scholar's father and murdered the swordswoman's. They join forces to lure the whip-wielding general into a trap.

No thrills or surprises here, but "The Young Avengers" is an interesting artifact of its time. There are far superior examples of late '60s Taiwanese swordplay films made on a modest budget (like Joseph Kuo's "King of Kings"), but few that are more authentic.