Author: Phil Gillon

It has numerous nods to the Shaw Brothers classics and harks back to those swordplay flicks of yesteryear, making you smile, cry, jump for joy and shout like a banshee, like any good martial arts film should.

If you love the gunplay genre then you’ll love ‘Vengeance’ as it’s amazing to look at, but the story does take a backseat so that the action can be given centre stage.

Action fans in particular will find much to appreciate here, especially the chance to see the Drunken style so excellently represented on screen.

The set pieces in general are nice, while the cinematography and the musical score do stand out but again, as a whole the film just doesn’t do what it says on the tin.

There’s some very powerful visual displays of violence that pepper the film throughout, showing us that if you turn to the dark side you really will become slave to its master.

It’s gonna be a love it or loathe it kind of movie as it’s not the dark, vicious film I expected, although there are some disturbing scenes thrown in there.

I’d say if you love your action then you won’t be disappointed but I still can’t shake the feeling that if Tony hadn’t left the set half way through, things might have been even better.

It’s definitely still a Chan movie through and through though, and as bizarre as it sounds, it does give you a slapstick yet emotional tour de force with a cutting edge.

Not a complete disaster but by no means the showcase that Wu Jing was no doubt hoping it would be.

‘Legend Of The Fist’ is a film that promises so much but delivers far less, especially considering this is a collaboration between Donnie Yen and Andrew Lau.

If you’re an action fan you won’t be disappointed and for me, this is Donnie Yen’s best film to date from an acting perspective.

Overall it’s a wonderful film, a blockbuster people call it, and maybe it is, but really for us Asian movie fans this is what it’s all about – a hard hitting, hard punching film with a heart of gold and a fist of iron.