Verdict
Summary
Blade of Fury is a gonzo cavalcade of Golden Harvest action. With its ultra violent prologue and snappy kung fu interludes that speckle the rest of the film, the movie entertains and engages, despite having a predictably melodramatic tragic ending
Plot: A young martial arts teacher becomes involved with a plan to reform Imperial China.
Warner Archives DVD Review: During the Qing Dynasty (19th century), China has been occupied by Japan and a do-or-die team of patriots who call themselves the Black Flag Group lay siege to a camp of Japanese soldiers. It’s a gloriously bloody (and pretty bonkers) battle that has guys running through trees, men being split in half (from the skull to the groin), and climaxes with a poor guy getting impaled on a Japanese flagpole.
The last man standing is one of the patriots – a half-bald martial arts expert named Wang Wu (played by Yang Fan) – and the story flashes forward some years and sees Wang as a humble teacher of a fledgling martial arts studio. His town is overrun with corrupt officials and sympathizers to Japan, and when a big martial arts tournament (Japanese propaganda) is held nearby, he inadvertently gets noticed when he jumps in the middle of a match to save a guy’s life.
The next thing Wang knows, he’s got a flock of young people at his door, hoping to learn martial arts from him. A famous patriot of China (played by Ti Lung) is arrested, and Wang thinks that if he can bust him out of prison, they can get the fires burning against Japan again, but when that plan goes nowhere (the patriot prefers to be executed as a martyr), Wang and his students go to war with another martial arts studio (Japanese sympathizers), ultimately climaxing in a self-sacrifice on Wang’s behalf.
Directed by Hong Kong superstar Sammo Hung (who also has a brief cameo in the movie as a prison guard), Blade of Fury is a gonzo cavalcade of Golden Harvest action. With its ultra violent prologue and snappy kung fu interludes that speckle the rest of the film, the movie entertains and engages, despite having a predictably melodramatic tragic ending. Kung Fu fans will enjoy it, and now that Warner Archives has just released it onto their DVD-on-Demand Archives collection, it’s readily available.
