The pacing and structure is all over the place. The first 30 minutes are setup and fairly uninteresting. Then it's an hour long training montage at the Shaolin. And then it's like 20 minutes of fighting the bad guys from the first part of the movie. But with weirdly comedic characters joining in to help?
I see it being referred to as one of the greatest martial arts movies ever and like.... I just don't see it lmao! It's not bad, necessarily! It's just not very impressive. I have far more background in appreciating wuxia films than kung fu films, so maybe my perspective is warped here. But the combat scenes that happened were just kind of boring! They were super average!
I don't really think that I can recommend this film when there are so many other incredible martial arts films from the 70s and 80s that feel more worthwhile.
