Moonlight Sword & Jade Lion

Rating:
Summary: High-quality transfer of lesser Angela Mao vehicle
Review: 1970s kung fu diva Angela Mao has a bigger part in MOONLIGHT SWORD AND JADE LION (1979) than in some of her other later films (e.g. SNAKE DEADLY ACT, THE LEGENDARY STRIKE) and cuts a striking figure as a swordswoman seeking the identities of the men who killed her parents when she was a baby. The fights tend to be too short and overly reliant on gimmicky stunts involving flying chopsticks and plates and the like, but Angela does get to do a lot of swordplay and acrobatics. However, the simple plot is made much more confusing than it needed to be thanks to all sorts of additional characters who skulk about plotting each other's murders for no discernible reasons. Kung fu star Wong Tao (CHALLENGE OF DEATH, DEATH DUEL OF KUNG FU) pops up early as a potential partner for Angela but then disappears for most of the movie. Another fighting femme, Lung Chun Erh (aka Doris Chen, star of THE MAGNIFICENT), appears briefly and has one fight with Angela over the Jade Lion of the title.

While it's strictly a minor entry in the kung fu genre, the good news is that it comes to us in a high-quality tape and DVD edition (from Crash Cinema) boasting a letter-boxed transfer which enables fans to see all of the action. The sets and costumes are all attractively designed and help make it, at the very least, a good-looking kung fu film. The English-language soundtrack is another matter, however, suffering as it does from a truly atrocious dub job featuring a particularly annoying voice for Angela. The music score will certainly sound familiar to fans of Italian westerns, whose soundtracks were often ripped off by kung fu movie producers.

Rating:
Summary: A serious Martial Arts Movie
Review: Although the action sequences were quite short(except for the final duel), this is one of the more serious martial arts movie I have seen. Angela Mao and Wang Tao were spectacular. Mao was so serious that you rarely saw her smile. The plot was twisted and good, and it was hard to tell who the bad guys were. A story of deceipt and betrayal. There was a good reason behind all the fight scenes, rather than people looking for every excuse to fight like in some other kung-fu movies. Though you might think it is slow paced at times, this is a good movie to keep. The sound quality was not very good though.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not enough
Review: I like it becuase it has a very cool in focus action , but if you compared the movie whit the real book , you realized that the movie has a lack of drama , but its a good option anyway .