Wednesday, April 26, 2017

THE CHALLENGER (1979) ** ½


A guy goes around challenging Kung Fu masters in hopes of finding the man he holds responsible for killing his wife.  He crosses paths with a crooked gambler and they wind up getting into a fight.  Afterwards, both men have to admit they respect each other's style.  Eventually, the gambler agrees to help him on his quest for revenge.

The Challenger suffers from some hit-and-miss fight scenes.  The finale is strong and there's a solid fight in a pond.  The sequences that rely heavily on comedy are weak (like the scene where our hero shoves a bunch of chopsticks into a guy's mouth) and don’t generate many laughs.

It also doesn’t help that a lot of the comedy is misplaced or done in poor taste.  There’s one scene where the Kung Fu master bares his soul and tells the gambler all about his pregnant wife's murder and he pictures it in his mind as if it were a silent comedy.  (His wife is shown with a balloon under her shirt and it accidentally pops.)  Another weird scene involves the gambler grabbing a guy's dick during a fight and asking him, “Feels good, doesn't it?”


Speaking of dicks, I have to say the best scene is when the villain kills the female lead by punching her in the face with his crotch.  You don't see that every day.  For that and that alone, I can’t bear to give The Challenger any less than ** ½.

AKA:  Deadly Challenger.

No comments:

Post a Comment