Customer Reviews

Legend of the Liquid Sword

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

His name is on the top, and his face is there on the left and down again at the bottom, and he is in two scenes of the movie, but this is not a Gordon Liu movie. It is an Aaron Kwok movie.

The action is rediculous, sped up, and not very coordinated. The humor is poor, and mostly unfunny. The two male roles are played by very similar looking actors. One of them is introduced as being semi-powerful, but later on he doesn't use any of his power. There are subtitles over a Chinese audio track, but you can't turn them off. There are also two song number in it (I hate musicals).

This is one of very few DVDs that I wish that I hadn't bought. I own about 40 kung fu DVDs and this is in my bottom three. It is terrible, from the beginning to the end.

One of the reasons for me purchasing the film was Gordon Liu's name on the cover. It turns out he is in very little of the movie. The English subtitles are poorly translated and at times very difficult to read. The story line is even worse, hard to follow and has a ridiculous "batman" vampire character.
Do yourself a favor and buy a better Kung Fu movie.

this movie is great. one of the best fantasy kung fu films i ever seen. gordon has no business being on the front. this is also a very funny movie. i laughed plenty and the action is top notch. lots of flying and super powers, just how i like my fantasy flicks. one of the best in my very large collection.

Probably the most prolific Hong Kong script writer ever. At least that I know of. But when he started out, he was an awesome kung fu writer. He has written and directed some of my favorite movies ever. Shaolin Pince, Prodigal Son, and Magnificent Butcher. To name a few newer ones-Last Hero in China and Royal Tramp part 1. But because he is so proilific he has written soem of the worst stuff ever-Raped by an Angel 4: The Raper's Union, Naked Killer 2 (aka Super Rape), City Hunter, Body Weapon...

But overall he is pretty good. I would say this is almost just as good as Evil Cult Master, or Last Hero in China (aka Claws of Steel), both movies that he directed.

Now this I have to say is easily one of the better new school kung fu movies ever. I figured this was another old school Gordon Liu flick and I heard he wasnt in it that much but was pleasantly surprised at how new it is. 1993 I believe, though you wouldn't be able to tell by the quality of the film transfer. It is about young fragrant sword(aaron kwok) who needs to go and defeat Shaolin. I think. It is a Jing Wong movie. You will see, but you have to try and follow along. Something that you will definitely notice is the unbelievable wire work going on. People don't realize how in movies like this they put people on wires to show how athletic they are. I don't know who the action director was, but he is certainly one of the greats. So the action is OHHHHHHH SOOOOOOO good but the child like humor just blends so perfectly with it. You still don't see what I mean, here is an example. Gordon Liu is praying at the Shaolin Temple and he notices someone is there. A guy comes out and is flyin around beautifully and Gordon asks when he comes face to face "who are you", "I am Batman" he replies. OMG I was rolling on the floor for a while. That wasn't one of the better fights of the movie, but the comedy more than makes up for it. Even though it is hard to decipher what is going on in some of the fights, the flying around and fighting overall is absolutely sublime and I highly recommend this SUPER weird flick. The ending looks like Kung Fu Hustle took a page from this(aaron kwok rising up) and while not great, it is a decent ending to a good kung fu movie. You'll see what I mean, it happens quite a bit. They just run out of time and money by the time they have to wrap up shooting and have to make the end as good as possible.

The dvd by Xenon proves again that they have to be the same company as Video asia, Groundzero, and Crash masters. Or AT LEAST ONE OF THEM!!!! They take absolutely no time in trasnferring this from the original film print it looks like. It is widescreened, but only about 90 some percent of course. The imbedded subtitles are impossible to read in the daytime scenes and then get this. When they break out into song(it's a Jing Wong movie), THEY PUT ON CHINESE SUBTITLES. HILARIOUS!!!!!!! The picture quality isn't all that bad, but I figure it's only becuase it's a newer movie and they didn't really have a chance to screw it up. So it is nice to see that there are better DVD companies coming out including Tarantino creating his own Asian Video distributing comapny. Now how does that sound? I don't think Tarantino would ever put out a release like this in this form!!

This movie is boring and uninteresting. There are moments of "comedy" mixed into the vague story. I couldn't make heads or tails with the story and the characters. The fights are clumsily choreographed. I don't even know what the liquid sword is. I do not recommend this film.

An excellent selection for a night of Chinese takeout and nonsensical kung fu. Every review on this page is absolutely correct; the film is poorly shot, the dialogue poorly translated (if at all), the action clumsy, the acting mediocre. It's so dizzyingly fragmented, it's wonderful. We could not for the life of us stop laughing. Just when we thought it couldn't get more bizarre than it had, the last scenes (I think it was supposed to be a conclusion of some sort) surpass all others in leaving the viewer completely bewildered and highly amused.

It's all in chinese and the movie is just too long. Yeah, man.. I sat through the entire thing... I fell asleep twice...

Gordon Liu is in no more than 10 minutes of this film. He has just one very brief action scene and it's too quickly edited to follow. While he is always thoroughly entertaining, his talents are greatly wasted in this film. The rest of this movie is just OK, like most of director Wong Jing's movies it is one part exquisitely surreal fantasy, one part unfunny comedy. I could watch it, but not without some fast-forwarding. For director Wong Jing's best work, check out Lord of the Wutang aka Kung Fu Cult Master.

i will go ahead and still give this movie a 5 star rating even though this particular version of it is very hard to follow for non-chinese speaking folks. the english subs are absolutely horrible on this film, and there is no english dub so it is at times hard to follow (especially during the daytime scenes where it is a white background against white subtitles) otherwise it has all the good (and stereotypical) elements of chinese cinema. gordon is barely in the film and that is just another attempt to sucker western audiences with a familiar face (kill bill). so if you want to see gordon dont buy this. if the production was better quality i believe the reviews would be better for this film, but since whoever "remastered" this didn't take anytime to make this easier for the average english speaking person to digest most will just feel like this is just another crappy kung fu movie...

This is one of the HOng Kong movies that breaks no new ground, does nothing original and has no overarching plot to contain the 4-5 stories contained therein. The Jesus joke at the end if funny, but if you want to get your friends as excited by Hong Kong movies as you are, this isn't the one to use.

However it's an enjoyable mess of a movie. The fight scenes are adequate. The pacing works. The weird motifs from Chinese opera are firmly in place. You can even forgive it for being marketed as a Gordon Liu movie when he's in it for five minutes at most (although one should note that the big name actor bait-and-switch is time honored tradition in movie marketing)

So buy it, watch it and give it to your friends. It's not great, but it's not bad either.