Shaolin and Wu Tang

The type of martial arts flick that gets me smiling like an idiot within 20 seconds and lets me know I'm in for a Good Time. A nice balance between badass training montages, fights with enjoyably busy choreography and simple plot fluff. The crummy VHS quality was both a shame and made it more enjoyably classic-y. Oh, and wasn't that one hip hop group named after this movie? The Shaolin Bunch?

Looking a lot like "Master Killer" and sounding a lot like the Wu-Tang Clan's first album this film is a cornerstone of Kung Fu Cinema and yet another incredible Liu brothers compilation.

Amazing, over the top martial arts action from one of the best kung fu directors ever (Liu Chia Liang) and starring the Master Killer himself, Gordon Liu. Essential viewing.

God bless awesome movies only available in shitty VHS quality. Whew, this is whole another trip kind of thing, where you aren't exactly sure what is going on. Just look at the crazy things those strangely dressed men do, and the listen to action scenes, I mean that the hell does it all sound like. It made me question reality. Gordon Liu is scary with his head-boxing(?) workout. That's some skill to perform all these things on camera and look good doing it.

I finally feel like a real Wu Tang fan. Cool to see where RZA took all the drops off of one of the best hip hop albums of all time, 36 Chambers, but the movie itself is both silly and awesome at the same time.

Gordon Liu used his experiences in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin to make this spiritual sequel thereof and spiritual remake of Romeo and Juliet as a kung fu bromance. It has great choreography, but I must say these characters have REALLY poor communication skills.

71

The story itself is fairly standard and basic but the martial arts on display is quite good as would be expected. They ending was a bit of a letdown however and hurt my rating a bit.

Gets a bit slow in the middle and the ending is a bit bizarre, even for a wuxia film, but overall good. Fights are excellent as expected.

Refreshingly good, an excellent example of the genre.

76.000

UP FROM THE 36 CHAMBERS! Okay, so that's a different movie but it's from the same album! And if you get the reference, you know why this film holds a special place. So it's cool (essential?) to watch for that reason, depending on how big of a 90s rap fan you are. Other than that, entertaining film with decent fighting that gets better as the film goes on, okay-ish plot(?), and overall entertaining. Nothing that will blow your socks off and kinda drags in the middle (surprising for a 90m film)

79.750

Somewhat worse than the characteristic bad script of the Shaw Bros film, which may tickle some viewers' fancy of silliness while annoying others. The choreography starts slow and gets better and better as it progresses, and eventually there is some pretty solid weapon fighting. Most distinctively, this was one of the very few Gordon Liu vehicle with him also at the helm.

The fighting is well choreographed and fun to watch, but the story takes a little too long to get moving - the Shaolin and Wutang conflict doesn't really materialize until the last 15 minutes. The final shot is hilarious.