Director Ke Zhou’s second directorial effort (the first being “The Master”) is more stylish than it is good, but it has enough drama and decent martial arts action to please aficionados, while the casual viewer would probably be best suited watching something else. I can remember the joy as a kid - and already a martial arts practitioner at the age of 9 - when I first saw Hong Kong kung-fu films. There was something so different about them, and I’m not just talking culturally, I’m talking about the martial arts themselves. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized just what that “something” was: the martial arts moves were fast . This was in stark contrast to the martial arts films of Jean Claude Van Damme or even earlier ones starring Chuck Norris. (And they were even more of a far cry from watching “Kung-Fu” as a kid, with the non-martial artist, non-Asian David Carradine!) In American-made martial arts actioners - what few there were - the actio...
Essays on Old-School Strength Training, Classic Bodybuilding, Traditional Martial Arts, and Budo Philosophy