The Proud Horse in Flying Sand
For a martial arts film this has an unusually complicated plot full of strange twists and stranger characters. In fact, I’m still not entirely clear what the story was about and who is who. Still, it was enjoyable and different and it seemed to possibly be influenced by The Fate of Lee Khan. (Though I am not actually sure which film came first as I don't know the year of this one. If anyone knows I would appreciate them sending me the information)
As in Lee Khan, much of the film takes place in an inn and nothing is as it appears. The story opens in a small town in China at some point in the far past and there is a big horse race occurring in a few days. The town is full of strangers and many of them are staying at the inn run by Angela Mao’s father. Under the pretense of being there for the horse race a number of characters stop by but all of them have some other scheme going on and no one is who they appear to be. I mean no one.
Some of the strangers in town
During the film, these characters keep shifting their allegiance from one person to another and trying to make under the table deals with one another. At the end all the dirty tricks and dirty laundry float to the surface. There is fighting interspersed within all this double-dealing, but it isn’t until the end when a good fight comes along.
The fight scenes are far from great – lots of sound effects – with clearly very little contact being made. Angela is only in a few short scenes though in the last fight she does some nice flips, cartwheels and a snake like attack. One of her opponents is her constant film nemesis – Pai Ying. She looks great though, but watch her closely !