Wednesday, July 12, 2017

THE BRAVEST FIST (1974) **


Two convicts escape prison while shackled together.  When the one good-natured convict won’t go along with his cellmate’s criminal schemes, they get into a big Kung Fu battle.  He then strangles the goody-two-shoes and takes off.

This scene is easily the best part of the movie.  From then on, the film switches focus to a humble, but badass dock worker trying to help an owner of a rice house from getting pushed around by bad guys.  This stuff is fairly standard in just about every way and is indistinguishable for dozens of other Kung Fu flicks I’ve seen in the past year.  The rest of the picture was bad enough for me to wish that the whole thing had been about the two convicts.  I mean imagine how great a Kung Fu remake of The Defiant Ones would’ve been.  Sigh.  

Sure, there’s plenty of Kung Fu action and chopsocky carnage, but although there are a lot of fights, nothing much ever really happens.  Also, the choreography is less than stellar and the editing is often herky-jerky.  I watch a lot of these things and even though it was action-packed, it still left me cold.  I honestly had trouble remembering much about it shortly after I watched it.

Outside the opening fight scene, the film really doesn’t feature anything you haven’t already seen before.  Even though it’s only 73 minutes, it feels much longer than that.  Your mileage may vary of course, but for me, the rest of the movie just couldn't live up to the promise of that opening scene.

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