General Stone
Watching Polly Shang Kwan weave her way through a group of bad guys like
a reaper through a wheat field is truly a pleasure. With a short sword in
each hand she makes quick work of a number of her enemies in this one and
shows no mercy whatsoever. It was kind of enjoyable seeing this side to her
– often her characters tend to be light hearted – but here she is all business.
A walking killing machine.
Wing Chao (Lung Fei) has taken away the throne from Polly’s clan – the Tangs
– and she is assisting them in regaining power. In an early scene Wing Chao’s
soldiers are cruelly slaughtering the inhabitants of a village sympathetic
to the Tang’s and Polly leaps down from a building and just rips through
them. In one lovely moment she thrusts her sword through a guy coming up
behind her – simultaneously grabbing his sword and throws it into the chest
of an oncoming fellow. When she is finally surrounded by too many of them
– she simply does a backward flip on to the roof of the building leaving
them open mouthed down below.
Another thread of the film left me a bit confused – but it seems that a stone
statue (General Stone) is the father of a Tang follower (Dorian Tan) – and
all these statues in a tomb teach him kung fu to fight Wing Chao. Earlier
on Polly had easily defeated him in a fun fight. General Stone tells him
that he has magical powers and great kung-fu if he practices hard. And he
hands him magical bracelets. The next thing we know he is joining up with
Polly to kill off a group of soldiers. Afterwards she says how did your kung-fu
improve so much? Well, that’s a long story. You see my father is a statue
and . . . oh never mind. Wang Chao has kidnapped Tan's mother so he
is all in on killing Chao.
Wing Chao hires a group of expert killers – all with different killing techniques
to deal with Polly and she has to take them on one by one. In an inn of course.
They were the most dangerous places to hang out in kung fu films. There is
always someone in there who wants to kill you for money or revenge or just
because he doesn’t like your looks. There are more fights than I can remember
with either Polly or Tan mixing it up. The director is Tao Hung who has this
as his only credit on HKMDB. But I expect the real director was the choreographer
– the great Han Ying-chieh who performed that duty on Come Drink with Me,
Dragon Inn and so many more films.
My rating for this film: 7.5
