Good movie but grossly overrated

From my favorite movies..

Absolutely Fantastic

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I have seen this film twice and I believe it to be way ahead of its time as, firstly, it features a woman as the main martial arts star when this was almost unheard of and, secondly, features a martial art very few people would have heard of in the West and Hapkido was given the title Lady Kung Fu in America to reach a wider market.Basically Hapkido is the story of three students of Hapkido, a Korean martial art like a cross between karate and jiu jitsu, who are persecuted in thirties China by the Japanese who set up karate schools and try to ban non Japanese martial arts. Obviously this being a martial arts film there are some spectacular fight scenes between the Japanese and the Koreans, particularly the end fight where Angela Mao and Hwang in Sik take on two Japanese senseis, one of whom is a dab hand with a sword, and fight them to the death, Angela Mao having a unique figthing technique that involves her pigtails.The main drawbacks are fairly poor dubbing on the version I've seen, Angela is given a corny American accent, the very cheap sets and poor acting. However, the quality of the fight scenes cannot be faulted and Angela Mao is as good as Bruce Lee.

I've seen this movie first time as "Lady Kung Fu" (a.k.a. Anjera Mao no Onna Kassatsu Ken) in a movie theater in Asia, and was impressed with Angela Mao's skills.The movie is bit like the "The Chinese Connection" in that Japanese oppression is part of the topic. Korean Hapkido school goes against the Japanese Karate school. The bad guys are of course the Japanese.This movie came out 6 month after the sensational success of "The Chinese Connection", both by Golden Harvest, so similarity is not surprising. Angela Mao was hot commodity for Golden Harvest at the time, and she takes the lead in this movie. She has this unique school girlish looks that makes her stand out in any movie she's in. Very young Sammo Hung also stars in this movie. It seems that he hasn't gotten a hair cut between this movie, and the time he stared in the "Enter the Dragon" the following year. He's also gained lot of weight between this and the "Enter the Dragon".This movie looks better now than when I first saw it. It has aged pretty well over 40 years. Still a great kung fu action movie, and recommended for viewing.

The plot of this movie is very similar to Fist of Fury, but in this film the main heroine is a female played by Angela Mao, who is better known for her role in Enter The Dragon, but in this film she get more of the show. The fighting scenes were great for that time's movie, though it beats some of the nowadays martial art's movies too. Actually the bigger part of the movie is fights, so if you want to see some great Kung Fu (Hapkido?) fights and don't care about a plot - this movie is for you. Angela Mao really knows how to kick and in this movie, she proved it several times. I liked Sammo Hung's character, who was a troublemaker in this film. Even Jackie Chan appeared in few scenes.

Lady Kung Fu is one of the greatest movies to watch if you like martial arts films. There are scenes in the film that take a while to pass (boring), but other than that, is packed with fantastic Hapkido skills from Angelo Mao, Grandmaster Ji Han Jae, Carter Wong, Sammo Hung, In-Sik Whang and the others. The end fight-scene between a black-bear student and Yu-Ying (Angela Mao) has a great choreography blend from the beginning of the fight till the point when Yu-Ying's eldest classmate jumps in to take on the black-bear student's teacher. It is a bit disappointing to see the teacher use a sword against Yu-Ying's classmate, because of the limitations of techniques the classmate can do without a sword. You can't have a great sword-fight with only one sword! Apart form that, the whole movie's fantastic!