Customer Reviews

Duel of the Iron Fist

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

David Chiang is superb in this one. A kung fu expert with a bad cough who must batle the great Lueng at the end of the movie. Lueng who was in John Woo's " A Better Tomorrow". Plays a carefree streetfighter who must do batle with the establishment and of course David Chiang who was brought in to deal with Lueng. The final batle between Chiang and Lueng in the rain at the end is fantastic, very well staged.And the ladies will love the tattoed buterfly on Lueng's chest, a symbol of his love for his lovely lady. I strongly recommend this one. It's a must see.

The Shaw Brothers, the company known for their many releases of Hong Kong films for many decades ran by producer Sir Run Run Shaw, knighted by the British government and founder of Shaw University in Hong Kong and even founded the HK-TVB TV network was a major power behind the company and his third brother Runme Shaw (who founded South Sea Film), the film company would become known as Shaw Brothers Studio and become the first studio to bring Hong Kong cinema with sound in 1934.

The Shaw Brothers have created over a thousand films and with several having been aired on US television and some being released on video, the 1971 film"The Duel" (Da jue dou) also known as "Duel of the Iron Fist" gets its US DVD release courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment and would star popular Shaw Bros. action stars David Chiang and Ti Lung and would team them up with legendary martial arts director Chang Cheh.

The film would revolve around two martial arts schools (which also function as an earlier version of The Triad). Tang Jen Chieh (played by Ti Lung) is the youngest of the brothers of his school and he is an excellent swordsman, one day he joins his school which are planing to ambush another school during a mourning period. In order to make sure the ambush goes perfectly, the school's elder hires another excellent swordsman/martial arts weapon expert Chiang "Rambler" Nan (played by David Chiang).

Jen-Chieh's school successfully slaughters everyone at their rival school but the owners were able to escape. As Jen-Chieh's brothers and fellow students celebrate their successful ambush on their rivals, Jen-Chieh tells his fiance that the butterfly tattoo on his chest will be filled with a color to signify his love for her. All seems to go well at the celebration party until the owners of the rival school ambush them during their celebration dinner.

Needless to say, many things go wrong, more people are dead and Jen-Chieh's godfather has been killed. Because of the deaths of the godfather and their ties with the local authorities, someone must take the wrap for the godfather's death. Each brother are willing to sacrifice themselves and take the blame but instead, Jen Chieh decides to take the blame and cast himself off as an exile and leave his school and his fiance to honor his godfather.

As Jen-Chieh has lived in exile for a year, he wonders why his brothers have not come back for him and why he has lived a harsh life. As he goes about his normal day dreaming of his fiance and returning back home, something goes wrong as people are trying to kill him. As he fights, defends and kills his attackers, he takes the train and tries to escape. But when he senses that people are after him on the train, he jumps off and finds himself in another predicament of people trying to kill him. To make things worse, he knows these people as students of his school.

Jen-Chieh learns the truth that one of his elder brothers was responsible for his godfather's death and now his brother wants him dead. Jen-Chieh is confused and is now determined to go back home and find out what went wrong but also to return to his fiance and hope she is doing fine.

But when he makes his long awaited return back home, what Jen-Chieh learns about his brothers, his fiance and what has happened during his one year exile will shock him.

VIDEO:

"The Duel" is presented in 16:9 widescreen and for the most part, Celestial Pictures has done a wonderful job thus far in their remastering of the Shaw Bros. films and "The Duel" is no exception. "The Duel" is one of the earlier Shaw Bros. films released from FUNimation Entertainment and picture quality does show the films age just a bit. But for the most part, for a film that is 38-years-old, this is probably the best presentation of "The Duel" that Shaw Bros. fans will see yet of the film.

AUDIO:

"The Duel" is presented in Mandarin and English mono. Mandarin is the way to go for this film as the English dub is not only cheesy but the old original English dub sounds tinny and recorded badly. In fact, you lose a lot of the crowd ambiance and the background music if you watch the English dub.

Subtitles are in English.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

"The Duel" comes with no special features but the FUNimation Entertainment trailers.

EXTRAS:

"The Duel" comes with a slip cover case.

JUDGMENT CALL:

"The Duel" is an action-packed, bloody fight-fes courtesy of Chang Cheh and features two awesome Shaw Bros. martial arts stars David Chiang and Ti Lung, all together for this film.

This film is quite interesting because not only does it feature martial arts but it also features an earlier version of when these martial arts schools started to become more corrupted, political and eventually an earlier film showcasing the triad. Many of the fights combine martial arts with the fighters armed with swords, knives axes and also machine guns. In some way, despite the era of when the film takes place, "The Duel" is somewhat reminiscent of the 1985 Shaw Bros. film "Hong Kong Godfather" which revolves around the triad, revenge, martial arts and a lot of slashing and blood.

But where "Hong Kong Godfather" takes place in the '80s and looks like a film from that era, "The Duel" is a martial arts film and one can expect a lot of action and even a duel between the characters played by Chiang and Lung.

Interesting part about this film is its use of sound and music. Some sounds seem to be misplaced at times but the most striking is the use of the main theme song which is literally a copy but slightly modified version of Richard Strauss's "Sprach Zarathustra" (which is used for the opening of the Stanley Kubrick 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey") and hearing the song over and over makes you wonder if director Chang Cheh or composer Yung-Yu Chen was a big fan of Strauss or the film which debuted in theaters a few years earlier.

I really did enjoy "The Duel" and although it is a visual bloody fight fest of a film, I did enjoy the younger brother seeking revenge and just seeing how life has changed for the worse at his school, his older brother and most of all, what happened to his fiance. Fans of David Chiang and Ti Lung films should be happy by their action-packed performance and most of all seeing these two kick ass.

There is a lot of humor and a lot of action and it's definitely one of the more violent and bloody martial arts films from the Shaw Bros. that has been released on DVD from FUNimation Entertainment (with "Hong Kong Godfather" being the most violent). For those expecting more martial arts, this film does include it but focuses primarily on the use of swords and knives versus hand-to-hand combat.

As for the DVD, the video presentation is well done due to the remastering by Celestial Pictures but the old English dub is terrible (personally, I could never stand dubs for martial arts films and it's quality is not the best) and as mentioned earlier, Mandarin is the way to go for this film. And like the other previous releases, there are no special features.

Overall, another solid inclusion to FUNimation Entertainments Hong Kong Connection and a Shaw Bros. film on DVD worth picking up!

for those of us older kung fu movie heads i had to say i saw this movie for the first time when i was about 13 and i can say the dvd i recieved sucked they sliced some serious plot scenes out of this movie and even the ending has been sliced out of this movie what gives!!!?

This is a classic Shaw Brothers gangster/kung fu movie. I really liked the dark tone to the film. David Chang and Ti Lung teamed up to take on the traitor of their gang. What results is a seriously high body count and blood flow. This movie is indeed very violent for its time, but then that's how it was meant to be. I really enjoyed this film and it is certainly a must have for Shaw fans and serious collectors. Please note that you should purchase the DVD FROM FUNIMATION ENTERTAINMENT, which is available here on Amazon. I think Amazon needs to separate reviews based on distributors; that is, make reviews available only for the respective releases. That is, I'm sure some of the reviewers here are referring to an earlier released version of this film which does not do any justice for both the potential buyers and this new release by a different distributor. I have noticed this for several films here on Amazon. For example, check out "The Return of the Five Deadly Venoms" which is has different versions. The version by Dragon Dynasty is perfect, but some reviews refer to the old crappy version from another distributor.

Anyway, get this film, it's really good.

Also known as Duel of The Flying Fist.

Excellent tranfer quality. Probably better than the Ivl version if anything.

English audio is a tad mute (volume needs to be turned up half way for you to hear it great) but it's consistent not like the Invincible Shaolin DVD (reviewed). It's the original english dubbing from it's hey-day with an alternate music soundtrack. No Ric Flair music. :( Chinese audio is great with coherent subtitles.

No extras other than the same trailers like the previous releases of Ichi and so forth.

Overall: 8/10

This movie with David Chan and Ti Lung is Fantastic but don't get the cheap version of this film its very poor look for the remastered version its excellent and a true Kung Fu Classic!

Its simple, look for the remastered version. Don't get just any version. The movie is a classic and gets 5 stars from me. They worked hard on this one. But, anything other then remastered of this classic isn't worth it. Look for sellers stating remastered version.

Although the movie is decent, the quality of the dvd is not, it has problems with sudden freezes at times, que quality of the picture is below standards and the ending of the movie is cutoff so there's no ending scene. A very dissapointing dvd.

For those not in the know, this was the second martial arts film shown in America (Yes, even before the late, great Bruce Lee's Golden Harvest classics became available). Being a Shaw Brothers movie directed by the greatest HK director ever, Chang Cheh, this film has its merits, but considering the talent behind it, it's somewhat disappointing in the choreography department. It has a decent story with good performances by Ti Lung & David Chiang, arresting visuals by Chang Cheh, glossy cinematography by Kung Mu-To, but what is up with the sloppy choreography by Tang Chia?! Being an old-school fan who saw this on a rainy Saturday afternoon as a kid, I can be forgiving (to be fair, it does have an action-packed ending including a bamboo pole duel between David & Lung in the rain), but I do NOT recommend this for younger fans raised on Jackie Chan or Jet Li. If you're a fan of Shaw Brothers (like me) and/or Chang Cheh (like me), then you probably already saw this movie and can decide for yourself. If you're not familiar with the aforementioned names, then I suggest you check out some later Chang Cheh films he made with the Venoms. They never disappoint!

Do not be fooled by the change of title, this is NOT Duel Of The Iron Fist...not entirely.

The VHS version of this classic film is called Duel Of The Shaolin Fist, and is edited for TV, minus much of the fight scenes, especially the final one. It's at least in wide screen, which is a plus. It clocks in at 90 minutes.

This DVD version clocks in at 98 minutes, but is full screen (meaning that we get to miss the sides of it all, including half their faces, at times). In addition, the ending is once again cut out of the film.

When will we be able to get the full-length, uncut version, in glorious wide screen? I doubt that I'll live long enough to see it again.

Awful work on this fantastic film. Don't waste your money.