Loyal Hero (侠骨风流)(1992)

Loyal Hero (侠骨风流)

Dir: Hongsheng Li
Cast: Honglin Dong, Fengyi Yang, Honglin Dong, Keming Liu, Jian Zhao, XiaoYi Ding, Haihua Han
Plot:  It’s the end of the Tang dynasty, the country is on fire. Yuchi Gong (Honglin Dong) wants to join the army of Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji. Unfortunately, he was disappointed by them and decided to join their enemy, Liu Wuzhou. The brothers Li heard that Liu’s wife and his sister-in law are two rare beauties so they decide to kidnap them.
Yuchi Gong succeed in rescuing them but Liu’s wife dies... The problems are not finished yet, the Li brothers found out about Yuchi’s wife and son and kidnap them..
Year: 1992
Country: Mainland China 
Trailer (edit by me from the original dvd ): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AbvSRuQlV4
Notes:  The movie is released in China on dvd by Gzbeauty. This version does not have any subtitles and so the flick is really hard to follow without some mandarin knowledge. As far as I know, no other releases are available.
The director, Hongsheng Li, started his career with the great Rescued from desperation (绝处逢生)(1985). It seems that his last movie was Loyal Hero, I couldn't find further information about him.
Honglin Dong is not newcomer in this field, he starred in movies like Kung Fu Hero Wang Wu (大刀王五)(1985).
Fengyi Yang is not new too, this beauty starred in Rescued from desperation (绝处逢生)(1985) (her first movie) and Deathat the Carefree Mansion (索命逍遥楼)(1990).
Personal opinion:  I was wondering what to buy next for our collection and I ended up buying this Loyal Hero, I didn't even know what was it about. Did I get lucky or unlucky? Let’s find out.
First of all, the movie is a historical drama set during the end of the Tang dynasty. The movie is full of names of people I ‘ve never heard about (I m pretty bad at Chinese ancient history), but I’ve been told that those people really existed.
I gotta say that most of the time when there was no action on screen , I got little bored from all those dialogues. Well, let’s not waste time on useless drama and let’s go to the action.
The movie is loaded with martial arts sequences; also the cooks can show a pretty damn good kung fu!
Weapons and fists everywhere, some wires but also a lot of physical skills. The fights are at normal speed although some are speeded up a little. I just loved when I saw the girl fight, her skills with the sword were outstanding.
One more thing before conclude this short review, at the beginning (you can see what I am referring to also in the trailer I made) the whole situation is supposed to be scared but the result was kinda of fun (cheap special effect), still pretty weird though.
Overall, the movie is pretty solid, you have martial arts and a little of history. If you just don’t care about the history part (like me), you will have fun with the action stuff.
Some snapshots from the original dvd: