The Mighty One (1971)

Directed by
Muddled plot, inventive action
Reviewed by Simon on 2006-09-14

It's one of Hong Kong Cinema's more endearing features that film makers can take a fundamentally simple story that's been done 1000 times, and still manage to make it hard to follow. Too many scenes are like echoes of previous scenes, whilst at other times you wonder if the characters have forgotten what happened 10 minutes ago. Perhaps it's the subtitles, which do read rather like a dub script (Stock dub phrase "You must be tired of living" gets said many times!), but I think it's mostly down to the editing.

So, from a narrative/character/emotional point of view, the film was a definite bust for me... what I did follow, I didn't much care about. On the plus side, I was impressed with the action, which isn't always well implemented, but does feature some very imaginative and inventive ideas... including a couple of quite wonderful deaths :-)

Not a film for everyone, but perhaps worth a look for bored fans of the swordplay genre.

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