A
bloodthirsty clan take out members of a rival gang at their boss’ funeral. (They smuggle in knives hidden inside burial wreaths.)
The gang retaliates by killing the head
of the clan. His son, Tang (Ti Lung) is
sent into exile for safekeeping, but when he returns, he discovers it was all a
ruse to supplant him as leader. His clan
even resorts to selling his girlfriend to a brothel. When she commits suicide, Tang teams up with
his sworn enemy, known only as “The Rambler” (David Chiang) to get revenge.
I
love shit like this. You know how it
is. When you and your mortal enemy are
at each other’s throats, but you put your differences aside JUST LONG ENOUGH to
help him out of a tight spot. Of course,
when it’s all over, you’re going to have to fight one another to the death. Naturally, when he’s wounded, you’re going to
nurse him back to health too. I mean,
you don’t want to fight him when he isn’t 100%.
Where’s the honor in that? This is
just the kind of macho soap opera shit that director Chang (Five Deadly Venoms)
Cheh excels at.
The
Duel features all the bloody fight scenes and out and out mayhem you’d expect
from a Shaw Brothers/Chang Cheh collaboration. The themes of loyalty and honor that run
throughout the picture are absorbing and the performances (especially by Chiang
as the fan-waving, cigarette-smoking badass) are uniformly great. The finale probably has one slow-motion
overly-dramatic interlude too many, but there’s enough gory goodness here to
make it a top-notch Kung Fu flick.
AKA: Duel of the Iron Fist. AKA:
Revenge of the Dragons.
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