Deadend of Besiegers
Review
Format: DVD
Stars: Yu Rong Guang, Cynthia Khan

Wuwechamatao (Guang), a Japanese, comes to China with a group of pirates. They start their quest looking for money, yet Guang doesn't know this. Not only that, but they intend to take hostages and children as well. When they arrive, Guang realizes what they are doing and escapes, saving a child as he runs away. On accident, though, he kills a man's father. This man, who wants to marry Gu Gui (Khan), if that's how it was spelled, first wants to kill Guang and then marry Khan to learn the Dog style and teach her the Tiger style. It goes on from there.

A non-stop martial arts movie to say the least. To start with, GET THE DVD, and try to find a wide screen version, though the cropped one still gave me a good idea of what was going on and there wasn't any action going on outside the cropped area. But the colors, cinematography, and sets are amazing, better than so many other period pieces. This one takes place in, oh, I dunno when there were Samurai, probably around 1600's to 1800's. It was filmed around 1983, but don't let that fool you, this one is a HK action fan's dream. So much action, Guang and Khan are amazing (Khan is the most beautiful person in the whole movie, which says a LOT), and they move around extremely well. If I went into every fight, I'd spend all day here at the keyboard, so I'll give you the jist of what happens.

Khan has the Dog Fist, which was interesting indeed but I didn't really see it used much. Her fiancee uses the Tiger fist, which wasn't used much either. Instead, there are lots of scenes with sword fights, lots of scenes with good kickboxing, and then of course there are a few parts with those two styles. Guang even fights a British guy who is REALLY good, but annoying as all hell. One side note, each fight in this movie isn't all short or whatever, but they are good lengthy fights, with lots of emphasis on using the environment, which I'll get into in a minute.



The scene with Khan vs Guang, with her using the Dog style and Guang using something that looks like Aikido or Karate, some Judo too, is very impressive. Being filmed in 1983, the movements were a tiny tiny bit slower than, say, 1989, but each one then gets more emphasis and things look, overall, much better than 97% of the HK action out there. The camera man obviously knew exactly what he or she was doing, with all things put into scope and there isn't any useless editing to make things look faster.



Seeing Guang today with a double hurts me. Seeing him do a backflip with a half twist as a fall onto pavement in this was refreshing indeed. He did everything. I couldn't tell if Khan did EVERYTHING because sometimes she had some hair covering her face, but almost every time her character did some kind of stunt, there she was. The beauty of old school martial arts movies. The two of them make such an awesome duet with martial arts, it's a wonder they didn't get... nevermind you'll see. The guy with the Tiger Fist really didn't do a WHOLE lot, but he was impressive as well. Even the Japanese samurai who had swords were impressive when they lost their weapons.

The last fight is insane. While I was watching it I thought 'Star Wars of Martial Arts' and that's exactly what goes on here. We see Guang fighting, Khan fighting, and Khan's father (Jackie Wu's father in Tai Chi 2), who is incredible as well and has no double EVER, for long periods before it switches to another character. Very cool. Guang is fighting inside a shed with some wine on the walls, Khan fights outside in the market (amazing stuntwork repeatedly), and her dad is inside a temple with about 50 other monks taking on the samurai staff vs sword, which is amazing as well. Guang's scene, though, probably takes the cake as being the most intense. So many hazards arise like 2 guys (one with a sword), a hostage, fire, rope, and wine, as well as a burning guy going wild at the end. Stuff breaks, place explodes, good guys win. What a movie.



10/10 - I'll watch this again because, as I said, it's a HK action lover's dream. Oh and let me mention something else that helped the movie a lot. There's music playing and as I said in my Paper Marriage review, music really adds to the quality of the fight and gives a great feel. Music that is intense, Chinese, Japanese, and overall very cinematic even by today's standards. I can't believe that I found this on Ebay by accident after searching for "Guang".

UPDATE - 10/8 Watching this movie again, and still knowing that it totally kicks ass, I realized that Khan was using Judo later on, which she learned from Guang in the training arena. Great evolving martial arts here.

UPDATE 10/9 - Rating System Change

5/5 - Still kicks ass.

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