Such a frustrating disappointment

Fantastic!

A Brilliant Conflict

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Deadly Duo is another very typical kung fu movie from the 70's. This one is a Hong Kong/Taiwanese co-production. It does have a story I gather but it did seem to be a very muddled plot indeed, so it was quite difficult knowing what was precisely going on a lot of the time and character motivations seemed unclear to me at least. There seemed to be a male/female couple who are joined by a man in a white suit. They appear to be the good guys and they fought a succession of baddies with long hair, whose boss was a man with a beard who appeared at the start and the end of the film. That's about as much as I can muster from the plot. But, like most of its ilk, the story seems to be just an excuse for lots of fighting which in this case incorporated much punching, kicking and jumping very high in the air. The dubbing was of course absolutely atrocious and the budget is, shall we say, 'competitive'. In other words, Deadly Duo is essentially more of the same if you have seen a few 70's chopsocky films. There didn't appear to be much to really differentiate this one from the crowd but it delivered on its basic remit of copious amounts of martial arts fighting, which is I guess all you can ask for in a flick such as this.

I saw this Taiwanese-lensed kung fu story under the title TWO GREAT CAVALIERS. The heroic duo are played by Angela Mao and John Liu, who between then made many such films during the late '70s. As a film this offers plentiful action and a fair amount of plotting, with enough villainous behaviour and shifting allegiances to make it worth a watch.As usual, the film is let down by a very low budget just about big enough to hire the actors and costumes but not much else. The fights are watchable but not the best this genre has to offer. Mao and Liu play two heroes who team up to help protect some Ming rebels from the avenging Manchu overlords. Beardy has a supporting role as a villain who gets injured, undergoes acupuncture treatment, and then has a change of heart by the film's climax. Chen Sing is the blackest of black villains and the climax is an impressive four-on-one kick fest as the heroes team up to bring him down. Watch out for his green hand technique!

Yet another Angela Mao old-school kung fu flick that is beneath her (and everybody else's) considerable talents. The "plot" is an ungodly mess – all I could make out is that there is this list of rebels and everyone's looking for it, and is prepared to betray / kill anyone to get it. I think Angela is on the rebels' side, yet one of her friends / co-fighters seems to be on the government's side! Anyway, when the film focuses on its plot, it only manages to be unwatchably boring. And despite the obvious martial arts skills of the participants, the fight scenes are generally unremarkable. The best one is probably the last, when John Liu and Angela Mao unleash a double attack of consecutive kicks on the final bad boss. Angela looks very beautiful in this film; I wish I could say the same about the DVD print! *1/2 out of 4.

Its hard to judge this film. First the Crash DVD uses an old marked print that badly needs cleaning up, and some pretty poor dubbing. Still they can't be held responsible for an unbelievable story and editing that often jumps all over the place. Buts let get to the good bits. First it features Angela Mao, John Liu (on superb form) and Leung Kar-Yan (Beardy) at the beginning and end. Shut Chung-Tin plays The Flying Knife who wants to kill John Liu for reasons not entirely clear. Man Kong Lung plays John Liu's 'brother. Lam Mei Wing plays the beautiful love interest and finally Cheng Sing the great main villain who only really appears at the very beginning and end. There are several twists and turns but no great surprises. I disagree with the other reviewer in that I thought the final fight with John Liu, Angela and Leung Kar-Yan (and their 'master') worth waiting for. John Liu is in real kicking form. The fights are many throughout this film and though not first rate, worth watching for John Liu and Angela Mao (and another I can't identify with a great silver sparkly cloak) in great action. Perhaps one for the kung fu addict but I've seen much, much worse and John Liu in this sort of form is worth 90 minutes of anyone's time.