How should you a approach a movie like The Invincible Pole Fighters? If you wanna look for hairs in the soup, look for all-too-obvious stage setting for the Yang brothers ambush. Then you could look for some very stagy looking death scenes. Or how about the library music it shares with Dawn of the Dead? On the other hand you could look for its virtues: Strong cast, strong story, excellent choreography and fortunately the virtues of this movie far outweighs its flaws. The story is epic, the choreography is nothing short of breath taking. The equals may exist. I just haven't seen them, this is riveting stuff, utterly infectious. Show it to non-martial art movie fans if you wanna see converts, this is martial arts to the performed to the highest standard of perfection. You will want to see this movie again and again. Own it. The best available copy is Celestial's Hong Kong DVD release in original aspect ratio without dubbing. Beware of bad dubbing and choreography-ruining cropping on western VHS releases.
Review of The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter
