Explosive
Summary
A solid, easy-to-follow kung fu picture from the Shaw Brothers, Lady of the Law has some nifty wirework and crackerjack chemistry between the two leads, making it a winner. Lo Lieh plays a head-hanging underdog hero who seems dimwitted until he begins exercising his fists and kicks as an unassuming hero. It’s a story I can get on board with, and director Shen Chiang did a really bang up job with this material. It’s fun, suspenseful, has plenty of action, and it’s relatively short at a quick 90 minutes, which is exactly right for a movie of this type.
Plot: A lady sheriff must decide the fate of a wrongly accused man she once had a connection with when they were children
Review: When he was a boy, Jiao was kidnapped by a band of brigands who forced his well-respected father to make a devastating choice: Save his life in exchange for his reputation, or allow him to be ripped apart by horses, but still keep his reputation as an emissary of the empire. Jiao’s father manages to (mostly) keep his reputation and save his son, but he’s killed as a result, and when he’s orphaned, Jiao’s fate is put in the hands of those who murdered his dad. They plan to kill him, but he’s saved by a lady sheriff with white eyebrows, who sees him as innocent and ensures that he will live to grow up to manhood. The lady sheriff has a girl child apprentice named Leng, and fate will reunite Leng with Jiao someday in the future. Sure enough, 10 years later Leng has grown up to be The Lady of the Law (played by Shih Szu), a revered and feared sheriff of an entire region, and when she comes to the town where a serial rapist has been raping and killing unaccompanied women at an inn, her whole purpose is to bring that culprit (or culprits) to justice. She nearly catches the perpetrator, who gets away. It turns out that the rapist has an accomplice and is actually the son of the high official in town, who decides to help his son evade The Lady of the Law by framing the lowly Jiao (played by Lo Lieh) who is virtually a slave to the high official. When framed and blamed in front of the entire town, Jiao reveals himself to be a formidable martial artist (which he was forbidden to learn or practice for fear that one day he would use it for revenge for the murder of his father), but he’s captured by The Lady of the Law who sees in him innocence. Since they had a connection with each other when they were children, she decides to try to help him prove his innocence, but it will be just the two of them against an entire town of thugs … who are more than willing to kill them to keep the identity of the rapist a secret.
A solid, easy-to-follow kung fu picture from the Shaw Brothers, Lady of the Law has some nifty wirework and crackerjack chemistry between the two leads, making it a winner. Lo Lieh plays a head-hanging underdog hero who seems dimwitted until he begins exercising his fists and kicks as an unassuming hero. It’s a story I can get on board with, and director Shen Chiang did a really bang up job with this material. It’s fun, suspenseful, has plenty of action, and it’s relatively short at a quick 90 minutes, which is exactly right for a movie of this type.
88 Films recently released a Blu-ray edition of Lady of the Law, and it looks and sounds up to their usual high standards in sparkling high definition. The disc comes with a slipcover, reversible artwork, an audio commentary, a stills gallery, and a double sided poster.