In the final years of the former Yugoslavia, the emerging video market became a battleground in the war between video pirates and legitimate video distributors. The latter, being the underdog from the start, tried to gain the upper hand by delivering less popular, but more exotic and better-catalogued merchandise, usually ignored by their pirate competition and missed by those who wanted something other than standard Hollywood material in their video stores. Such a policy pleased those who wanted to watch former Yugoslav, European, Indian, Turkish, or Russian films, or those films belonging to genres unpopular in the early 1990s like spaghetti westerns, Italian historical spectacles, or martial arts movies from Hong Kong. One such video collection was made up of twelve titles, covering the early career of Jackie Chan in the 1970s, mostly belonging to the genre of kung fu. I watched them all and, among them, To Kill with Intrigue, the 1977 kung fu melodrama directed by Lo Wei, was one of the better ones.
The plot of the film begins when young master Cao Le (played by Jackie Chan) chases away Chin Chien, his pregnant girlfriend and one of the palace maidens. Cao Le's cruel act is actually motivated by a desire to save her life, since a vicious gang of 'Killer Bee' bandits is about to attack Le's family estate. They arrive, led by Chin Chang Yin, a woman who had her face scarred as a child by Le's father, and kill everyone. The life of Cao Le is spared and he goes on a long and perilous journey in order to reunite with Chin Chien, who has met his friend Chin Chun. While Cao Le tries to reach both of them, he is constantly tormented by Chin Chang Yin, who took an unusual interest in his plight.
For some people, kung fu films are by definition formulaic, with cardboard characters and plots being nothing more than a cheap excuse for totally unrealistic fight scenes. For me, the kung fu film is a specifically national (Chinese) genre, and, as such, it has specific genre rules that, nevertheless, allow their makers precious creative freedom, in the very same way different authors make different westerns. To Kill with Intrigue, with a simple yet complicated plot that deals with romance, friendship, unrequited love, betrayal, and revenge, is one such example. Completely devoid of humour, the script by Kung Lu gives Lo Wei the opportunity to engage in straightforward drama with believable characters. It is also an opportunity for us to see Jackie Chan, an actor almost always associated with comedy, in a serious dramatic role. The dramatic scenes in this film are powerful, compensating for sometimes overlong and unrealistic fight scenes, plagued with bad editing and even worse special effects. The musical score is sometimes corny, as are some romantic scenes, but as a whole, the film works, giving those accustomed to kung fu films more than average quality entertainment. The greatest disservice to this film is done by poor English dubbing and even worse pan & scan editing."
The changes made were primarily grammatical (articles, prepositions, verb agreement) and adjustments to align with British English spelling conventions, such as "humour" and "catalogued." The structure, italics for film titles, and all intended meaning have been preserved.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on January 2nd 2000)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/18758-jian-hua-yan-yu-jiang-nan Critic: AA
