Kung Fu Review #5

Whew! It's about time y'all!
I know I promised you some Kung Fu goodness weeks ago, but i have been VERY VERY busy.
My bad.
Without further ado, here is the next installment of-
Bum-Bum-Buh-Buhhhhh-

KUNG FU REVIEW!!!!!

Ok. so the maybe the fanfare was a bit much.

The film I'll be reviewing is Five Fighters from Shaolin- the sequel to Ninja Hunter
The film opens with a Pai Mei type character offering up a woman as a human sacrifice.
It's got a weird satanist feeling, with shades of reds and blacks and a spiritual slant.
All this is not accidentally subliminally sexual in nature, and Pai Mei cofirms this by penetrating the woman with a dagger
through the heart, and blood gushes everywhere in an ultra-fake stream the way it notoriously does in martial arts films.
Cut to ninjas infiltrating a Buddhist temple. Their reason for doing so is to destroy any threat to Pai Mei, by confiscating their Kung Fu manual of fighting styles.
They are then stopped by a strange monk who then reports the strange activity to his peers. They then ungratefully jeer him and disbelieve his actions, so he decides to leave the temple and recruit martial artists on his own to learn what's what with the Ninja.
During his travels he meets up with 1 hero, 1 acrobat, 2 thieves/charlatans, and 1 strongman.
They then return to the temple to provide protection, but are turned away.
realizing the temple is doomed, the monk decides to build his own temple. While doing so, our five heroes learn various fighting styles (pole, tiger, chinese boxing, some kind of kickboxing, and gymnastic), which will help them to defend their new temple from Pai. The training session is pretty neat, and there are bits of slapstick, and even a song(!?!)
Soon the temple has been built, and the 5 fighters concentrate on perfecting their skills.
Meanwhile we learn that the Ninja have'nt forgotten the monk's efforts to keep the manual from them, and they decide to jump him. That's to no avail though, because he easily dispatches them.
The monk is not out of the woods though. Pai decided to accompany the ninja, and ends up handing the monk his ass, seeking revenge for their previous fight (as seen in Ninja Hunter).
The monk escapes, but not before Pai uses some voodoo type Kung Fu skills to kill the monk.
After using an EXTREME method, the monk stops the effects of the voodoo.
As the monk makes his way back to his temple, the Ninja clan then attacks and kills one of his deciples in a particularly evil way.
The rest of the deciples then begin training even harder to exact their revenge.
They also steal the manual from the old temple and take it to the new one for safe keeping.
Pai soon visits the old temple, demanding the manual, and gives the monks three days to turn it over.
The five fighters then get the word out to pai that they have the manual, and they dare he and his ninja clan to come and get it from their temple.
He and his clan do, and that is when all sorts of Kung Fu hell breaks loose.
Using Boxing, Tiger, Pole fighting, Wuxia (swordfighting), and a cool ring acrobatic style, (Yes, the rings used in olympic competition) the fighters easily handle the ninja. The fighting is totally over the top, but it's beautifully choreographed.
Each martial artist flows with whomever they are fighting. It's a Deadly dance if you will.
I also noticed that the five fighters used the tools they trained with to whip some serious ass. Neato.

Each fighter is pretty accomplished in terms of their martial art, except of course the gymnast. He pretty much just used the rings to tie up or confuse his enemies. (No real Kung Fu skills)
They do pretty well till Pai Mei shows up & uses his funky fresh voodoo and Invincible armor type skills to gain an advantage.
I wont even go into the fact that he can detonate weapons and heads(?) at will.
His fight with the five is pretty boring until the final battle. This is WELL worth the wait.
All in all, I was pretty pleased with the film despite Extensive wire work. Although I generally don't like martial arts films with an abundance of training, there is CRAZY action throughout.
The only gripe I have about the film is the COMPLETELY unbelievable ending of the last fight. Now you know that if someone complains about a Martial Arts film being unbelievable, then that's really saying something.
Beyond the lame ending, I thought the film was an enjoyably cheesy action-packed movie, well worth a watch.
So I'm gonna give it 3 1/2 Kung Fu kicks out of 5- It would have gotten 4 but the end was the living end.


Peace.