Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion (1977)

just watch it!

Just perfect...

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

From my above summary line, you may have concluded that I do not like Hong Kong/Taiwanese kung fu movies. Actually, I really enjoy these movies... at least those made from the mid-1980s on. Efforts made in the 70s for the most part I must admit do not move me, including this one. It is a little better than average, thanks to not only some good looking sets and costumes, but also some skillful camera work and visual composition. But apart from that stuff, I was bored for the most part. The scenes involving kung fu are indistinguishable from the dreary kung fu you usually get in a 70s movie. The story is thin and curiously keeps the movie's heroine off of the screen for large chunks of time. You won't be missing much if you skip seeing this movie, and I can only recommend it for die hard fans of Angela Mao - and even they will find much of the movie dreary and boring.

Feisty ace martial artist Chu Siew Yen (a sound and commanding performance by the beautiful and charismatic Angela Mao; Bruce Lee's sister in "Enter the Dragon") promises her teacher that she will find his missing brother. During her search she also tries to find the person who killed her parents. Of course, accomplishing said tasks proves to be easier said than done as Chu faces opposition from many people while attempting to uncover the truth. Karl Liao's energetic direction maintains a snappy pace throughout and stages the plentiful chopsocky action with considerable rip-roaring brio. The slight and often jumbled plot is really nothing more than a flimsy excuse to show off Mao's incredibly agile, athletic, and exciting martial arts prowess. Fortunately, Mao more than holds her own as she takes on several folks all at once and manages to retain her poise and dignity as the story gets more increasingly silly and unintentionally funny (one gut-busting camp highlight has Mao fighting a bunch of women armed with deadly giant exploding flowers!). The handsome widescreen cinematography by Sun-po Li and Yung-hin Cheng boasts a sizable number of smooth gliding tracking shots and makes the most of the pretty rural scenery. Fu Liang Chou's rousing score also hits the stirring spot. The dubbing is really bad and thus adds to the picture's considerable kitschy charm. An entertainingly inane diversion.

"Moonlight Sword & Jade Lion" tells us about a young fighting lady, played by Angela Mao, who is on the search for an old master. Nobody has seen him for months, it appears, so she keeps asking people "have you seen him?" and sometimes she fights them if she doesn't like the reply. Now, the movie has a couple of memorable moments, such as the hilarious fight against roughly 20 enemies at once who are holding flowers (sic!) which can shoot flames or darts. That doesn't help to disguise the fact the story isn't exactly Sherlock Holmes. The heroine spends a month wandering around looking for clues, doesn't find anything important, and most characters just seem to be introduced to confuse her and the audience a bit. And if they do intend to tell her anything, they suddenly have a knife in their back. It was a relief to see in the other reviews that nobody else understood what the Jade Lion was for, either. So in the end, "Moonlight Sword & Jade Lion" is worth watching only for fans of Angela Mao who bravely carries on despite the lack of story progress.

I was really looking forward to this : Angela Mao and Don Wong Tao together, but apart from a few scenes this is a disappointment. First the Dynasty print is pretty poor (a VHS transfer ?) and why they didn't change the extremely poor dubbing is beyond me. I'm still not sure if it was the dubbing or poor editing that led to me wondering what was going on most of the time. Numerous characters come and go and who Don Wong was meant to be was lost on me. It starts slowly with a rather stiff acting Angela Mao (with rather strange hair style even for a Chinese film) wandering around looking for her masters missing brother. The fights are mediocre and occasionally contain some strange weapons which seem to work poorly. There is a lot of unnecessary wire work and the settings look cheap and flimsy at times. The beautiful Doris Lung pouts a lot but her fight with Angela should have been a highlight - and wasn't. Man Kong-lung as a poisoned (presumably black mailed) swordsman has several pretty poor fights. HK Cinemagic mentions Ti Lung in the cast but this is either a mistake or he was very well disguised. Definitely not one of Angela or Don's better films. What a shame this could have been so good.