Last Hurrah for Chivalry

[Drunk Monk]

This is one of the greatest John Woo Kung Fu flicks. The other would be Hand of Death, which is great because it's Woo directing Jackie and Sammo in a very early film for all three of them, but it's more like a diamond in the rough, whereas Last Hurrah is fully actualized. It's a classic Golden Harvest golden age Kung Fu movie, with exploitively long fight scenes of the most absurd choreography, yet each cut gets in at least a dozen moves in complex, full body sequences, the kind of stuff that Kung Fu practitioners hold in awe because the level of skill displayed. It's not high impact, more dancelike, but quite beautiful to behold. It's a classic Woo bromance, what Western critics would dub homoerotic in his Triad&Tong flicks. There's some 'only in a Kung Fu classic' motifs, like the Sleeping Wizard, an evil guardian that uses a rare style of 'sleeping' Kung Fu. There's a great white-eyebrowed long-bearded villain, that despite his white hair, is always shirtless and rightly so as he has a body like Charles Atlas. And he wields a guandao, so major extra points for that. Plus there's lots of ninjas - can't have too many ninjas - and endless supply of fall guys because you can use the same stuntmen over and over. But the kicker is that the bromance is between two swordsmen, so there are lots of glorious swordfights. What's more, they are drunken swordsmen. This is one of those old school Kung Fu flicks that just captures the essence of the genre during that period, plus through the lens of John Woo, which is fascinating given the direction he went later.

[cranefly]

Very early John Woo film when he first started working for Golden Harvest.  The fights are cadenced, as was the norm back then, which makes them a bit hokey at first.  But more than making up for this is the long and complex fight scenes, with an amazing amount of hand-switching (which the fight choreographer talks about in an extra feature), and lots of different weapons: straight sword, broadsword, double broadsword, Guan dao, rope darts, chain whips, spear, staff, etc.

As discussed in the bonus material, this was John Woo's "cavalcade of weapons" movie where he just totally went for it with martial arts weapons.  Also, the fight choreographer (and one of the villains) discusses the 100-strike orchestrated scenes, and how in one of them they messed up on strike 98, redid it to mess up on strike 30, and so on.

Not a great film, as it meanders into some awkward emotional scenes (a dying mother, a prostitute in love with a drunken hero who only wants more wine) that just don't work.  Women are really just furniture here.  But the 20-minute battle to enter the lair of the big bad villain (which includes a wonderfully odd encounter with the Sleeping Wizard) is quite impressive and inventive.  And then in one of the movie's many twists, there's another long and offbeat battle with the biggest and baddest villain of all.

Worth a gawk.

[Drunk Monk]

[quote pid="18805" dateline="1397316740"]
Drunk MonkThis is one of the greatest John Woo Kung Fu flicks.  The other would be Hand of Death, which is great because it's Woo directing Jackie and Sammo in a very early film for all three of them, but it's more like a diamond in the rough, whereas Last Hurrah is fully actualized. 
[/quote]

I recant this. Hand of Death is very mediocre - nascent skills can be scene in Woo, Jackie & Sammo but there are far better films of each of these three that I’d recommend before this. 

Seen on Amazon Prime free-vee

Notes
Hand of death
Young Sammo is thicc but not fat, solid Kung Fu, goofy fake teeth
Nascent cinematography - rudiments of woo’s framing style
Young Jackie with very Chinese eyes
Lead Doran Tan - retired to teach Shannon Lee & Ke Huy Quan.
Jackie is the blacksmith
Fairly standard KF tale of vengeance
Jackie’s spear fight is solid - he’s a beat before his opponents