Hand of Death Rating: Release Date: 14 November, 2000 Retail Price: $29.98 OUR Price: $26.99 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo Biao Yuen Yuen Biao Sammo Hung Complete Cast (9 total)

Hand of Death Reviews

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AWESOME release with an almost perfect picture presented in a 16:9 format
Hand of death is a wonderful early project by the well known hong kong action director john woo. In the opening sequence we get your typical explainig of how the shaolin temple was massacred by the manchus told by the survivors. Watch for a cameo by Wilson tong. Then their idea is to recruit the strongest man in the county(dorian tan, aka tan tao-liang) to assasinate the governor. Sammo Hung has some kind of stupid buck teeth but looks way badass as a manchu warlord killing people at will. John Woo does not just rush over big things and tends to dwell on them more in his early days. He made I believe 4 kung fu films before breaking into his gun fu genre.

Don't buy this expecting to see Jackie in his typical doign crazy stunts or learning snake fist style by a strict master that beats him. He plays a weird looking rough type of guy but has one of my afvorite performances ever from him. This is one of Sammo's first major films and he was the action coordinator. He helped out his little brother Jackie by giving him a role and Jackie ended up helping him and EVERYONE'S careers with his amazing spear work.

SO DORIAN TAN IS THE STAR OF THIS FILM and meets up with jackie who helps him get past the guards to get into town so he can plan out is assasination. And he makes himself stand out by his fighting ability. The story is slow and the kung fu is not the best I have ever seen, but still manages to be above average in so many ways.

James Tien plays teh governor/commander and I have never really liked him but he is just good enough in this for me to respect him a bit more. When choreographed well, he looks decent. So Sammo recruits Tan for James Tien to be one of his bodyguards and tan has his fun. Not your usual movie made in 3 days type of fun. Woo puts this into real type of situations and you can tell he is is a director unlike anyone else.

So expect a lot of good dialogue that is very unusual for this genre, a final fight that will dissapoint, but the movie as a whole is just really good. The finale resorted to your typical guys meeting in the middle of nowhere but everyone was just starting out in their careers and it is an amazing early effort.

The sound effects and dubbing sucks like all these fox/fortune star releases but does have a cantonese soundttrack and 5.1 sound. So at least we get the music they used which was pretty good. Not original music when made, but tweaked a bit and fits the scenes well. No special features, again just like all their other movies. Still a 5/5 for releasign it which very few companies find the time to do.

John Woo's pre gun era good movie bad kung fu movie
This is a pre 1986 John Woo film. He wrote it and directed it it is a good movie. It has a good plot. It is a realy slow moving film action wise. The charactors are very well thought out and planned and the story is realy good but it is a kong fu movie with a lot of acton sceens. It's not meant to be a film just on the basis of plot and story. The action sceens are a staple of what this film is as a period martial arts film. Believe me I love movies with that are period films that aren't martal arts films in hong kong but they don't need to be based on the sole idea of reveange. They are sopposed to be a certan way. I finaly got used to this film and I do like it. But there is no reason why the action sceens should be this slow paced Samo Hung is tha acton director after all. I think that John Woo must have wanted the acton sceens this slow paced but for what reason I do not know. Even the stars of the movie in "count down in kung fu" also called head of death by golden harvest in the original english dub. Tao-liang Tan was the lead and I have seen him do crazy insane stunts but in this movie it was very slow and tame. See it for youself! To you it may be good it may not!

More Customer Reviews (6 total)

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