Highly Overrated But Still Good

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

THE PROUD YOUTH is another complex, evolving story of the martial world from the Shaw Brothers studio, based on a novel by Louis Cha. Wong Yue is the wandering swordsman hero, just on the cusp of being re-styled as a comedy kung fu actor in the Jackie Chan mould by the studio. The film is very much in the same style as the films of Chor Yuen, featuring rival clans, murder, and mucho bloodshed. Good luck following the plotting, which has so many supporting characters trying to upstage each other that you'll be hard pressed to follow every little detail of it. Still, the production values are sumptuous, and the supporting cast is exemplary, with all manner of familiar faces showing up: even one of the Lucky Stars team is here, Stanley Fung, a decade before he became typecast as a comedy actor! Best of all this is an action-packed odyssey packed to the brim with endless sword fights and death, all played out in the finest of sets.

Considering that this was made 30yrs ago, it holds up quite well. The quality of the DVD is very impressive. A film of this vintage is usually taken from an old print which is faded and scratched. Because it is a period Kung Fu flick it could almost pass for a recent production. (The wire work and lack of CGI give it away. Nevertheless, it's reasonable given the technology of the day.)The twisty plots and sub-plots are typical of this genre. There's often the "Who's the actual bad guy denouement" and the clash of Good vs Evil. This film differs slightly in that it presents a lot of "Grey" to the mix. The choreography is better than in most films of this genre, and the balance of action to story is good. The bonus here is a story which makes sense.A Shaw Bro's Eastern can be likened to a John Ford Western.

As mentioned in my earlier review of Swordsman, it isn't easy condensing plot elements from Louis Cha's richly textured martial arts novels for the big screen. In The Proud Youth (bad title by the way), somehow it managed to do so, given a screenplay written by Ni Kwang, but it's ultra summarized, with zero room for character development, and scenes which don't seem to flow smoothly from one to the other, resulting in episodic treatment of sub plot development.But the most unforgivable thing done to it, was complete name changes to almost 90% of the characters. Gone are Linghu Chong, Renwo Xing, Dong Fang Bu Bai etc, and in place were some generic names like Gongsun Song for Linghu Chong! My guess was that given the summarized nature, having the actual names will do no justice to the original source material. So the next best thing would be to change the names, while retaining certain character traits that will allow them to be distinguished and mapped back to the original.It's a pity though, while the names of the 5 sword sects are kept, the ultimate swordplay technique had to undergo a complete, unnecessary revamp of title and style, which made it look like a very lame, generic martial arts move, with totally different origins. Fans of Du Gu Jiu Jian, I'm sorry but you won't get to see it demonstrated here. The fight scenes are reminiscent of styles of old though, with the heavy reliance of "ketchup" as a substitute for fake blood. While the fights look interesting, at times they turn out to be quite clumsy, with its special effects being shoddily done (yes, I'm aware it's the 70s), and camera angles being out of position, and revealed quite clearly that swords were flimsy cardboard, and driven into the sides of bodies only.There are familiar plots like the introduction/battle with Dong Fang, the book Kui Hua Bao Dian requiring the practitioner to castrate himself, the rescue of Ren Wo Xing, the driving out of Linghu Chong from Hua Shan sect, and his learning of the Du Gu Jiu Jian, the musical number consisting of the flute and zither, and on hindsight, it's pretty amazing how all these were squeezed into 90 minutes. I was surprised at the exposure of a boob though, and in slow motion some more. And that was in 1978, for a martial arts movie some more!This is no Xiao Ao Jiang Hu. In name only, but definitely not in spirit. Please give this a miss, and proceed to the version starring Sam Hui.Code 3 DVD contains very limited special features. There are a few production and movie stills, one original poster, a one page one paragraph worth of production notes, the theatrical trailer and other trailers of the same genre, and a very short cast and crew biography.No qualms about the transfer, and traditional Chinese and English subtitles are available over a Chinese language soundtrack.

A decent entry in the martial world genre from director Sun Cheung. We are introduced to the efforts of the Five Clans to eradicate the "evil" renegade clan. Not much is shown regarding this as the movie centers around the story of the "Proud Youth" who heroically rescues a Taoist nun from a rapist, she then nurses his wounds which angers the Taoist high priestess and the Youth's clan leader, his adopted father. They both refuse to listen to the nun or the youth about the circumstances. There's also a subplot regarding a warrior who is friend to a member of the "evil" clan which angers the leader of the Five Clans. A running theme in this movie is the clash between rigid social mores, pure friendship and moral righteousness. Anyway, it's filled with intrigue and plot twists.The film is less stylized then other Sun Cheung films, it seems more like an offering from Yuen Chor who specialized in "martial world" movies. While filled with the requisite fantastic fighting techniques, crazy weapons and wire-fu, the action scenes show Sun Cheung's solid direction and editing. The fight scenes in his movies frequently seem more intense then the other Shaw directors.A reasonable way to pass an afternoon.