Reviews (16)

A lot of good action but confusing as heck
This is a pretty fun movie, with lots and lots of crazy action, and some pretty well acted scenes, but it is unbelievably confusing, so you never totally get behind the characters. Michelle Yeoh looks great and does a decent job but she just seems too wholesome to pull off the role of the somewhat evil kung fu master. She is not as intense as Brigitte Lin who is really the master of that sort of character. Tony Leung, Donnie Yen, and Joey Wang are all really great in this movie. This is highly recommended for HK fans but not so much for casual kung fu fans who are better off with something like Swordman II. Be warned that there are mandarin only editions of this movie on the market, so make sure you are getting a cantonese version if that is what you want.

donnie yen and michelle yeoh are the only good things...
This film cannot be categorized as a martial arts film. Unlike the recent released Iron Monkey, Butterfly Sword's action scenes are so chaotic and confusing that you cannot really tell whether a person is fighting a deadly opponent or is simply twisting in the air for fun. With body parts flying everywhere, you wonder if you are watching a horror film. It is not a fantasy film either. There obviously is no ghost or gods, and supposedly people in this film don't really possess supernatural powers. Therefore, the action scenes can only be said to be insulting to either genre.

Despite a strong cast and beautiful scenery, the movie ultimately disappoints. One saving grace for this film is Donnie Yen. Though his great talents were wasted in his fight scenes due to over-use of wires, poor camera work and disastrous editing, he managed to compensate by putting more heart and warmth into his character, the ever serious but sincere Yip, who is the only likable character in the film. Too bad we have not seen Donnie Yen as often as we see Jet Li or Jackie Chan. A much better actor than Jet Li and extremely gifted in martial arts, he exuberates a certain charisma that simply draws people to him, either in a major role or a supporting role. Michelle Yeoh on the other hand is marvelous. She conveys emotions just as effectively as she does swirls and kicks. The scene where she glides through the air between two bamboo trees is one of few good action scenes in the movie, but it perhaps is one of the most graceful and elegant scenes I have seen in any martial art films.

Two stars for Michelle and Donnie.

Donnie Yen's best swordsplay
Donnie Yen is the only reason to get this film really. Michelle Yeoh's peformance is that of a bitter jealous "adopted" sister. The movie focuses a lot on romance and drama leaving little room for true action, although it is present.

Donnie plays a drunken loaner, who's hopelessly in love with Michelle Yeoh. Aside from that, there's Tony Leung and his goofy wife. The rest of the cast is pretty cooky. This is a typical early 90s film for those of you familiar with the genre.

Good fighting scenes. Love story with twists.
The fighing scenes are fast, furious and violent. For example, in one scene, a fighter pushed his sword and his whole body completely through the chest of his oppenent.
The love story has some twists. What looked like the love between a sister and her younger brother turned out to be more than that.

Excellent! Among the best of Yeoh!
Excellent in action, acting, direction, screenplay... I can't remember how many times I have watched it. ... Read more

Description

Action stars Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen are featured in this swordfighting tale starring Joey Wang as "Butterfly." Along with Tony Leung, the foursome all parry and thrust their way through a deliriously-paced yarn. ... Read more

Reviews (16)

A lot of good action but confusing as heck
This is a pretty fun movie, with lots and lots of crazy action, and some pretty well acted scenes, but it is unbelievably confusing, so you never totally get behind the characters. Michelle Yeoh looks great and does a decent job but she just seems too wholesome to pull off the role of the somewhat evil kung fu master. She is not as intense as Brigitte Lin who is really the master of that sort of character. Tony Leung, Donnie Yen, and Joey Wang are all really great in this movie. This is highly recommended for HK fans but not so much for casual kung fu fans who are better off with something like Swordman II. Be warned that there are mandarin only editions of this movie on the market, so make sure you are getting a cantonese version if that is what you want.

donnie yen and michelle yeoh are the only good things...
This film cannot be categorized as a martial arts film. Unlike the recent released Iron Monkey, Butterfly Sword's action scenes are so chaotic and confusing that you cannot really tell whether a person is fighting a deadly opponent or is simply twisting in the air for fun. With body parts flying everywhere, you wonder if you are watching a horror film. It is not a fantasy film either. There obviously is no ghost or gods, and supposedly people in this film don't really possess supernatural powers. Therefore, the action scenes can only be said to be insulting to either genre.

Despite a strong cast and beautiful scenery, the movie ultimately disappoints. One saving grace for this film is Donnie Yen. Though his great talents were wasted in his fight scenes due to over-use of wires, poor camera work and disastrous editing, he managed to compensate by putting more heart and warmth into his character, the ever serious but sincere Yip, who is the only likable character in the film. Too bad we have not seen Donnie Yen as often as we see Jet Li or Jackie Chan. A much better actor than Jet Li and extremely gifted in martial arts, he exuberates a certain charisma that simply draws people to him, either in a major role or a supporting role. Michelle Yeoh on the other hand is marvelous. She conveys emotions just as effectively as she does swirls and kicks. The scene where she glides through the air between two bamboo trees is one of few good action scenes in the movie, but it perhaps is one of the most graceful and elegant scenes I have seen in any martial art films.

Two stars for Michelle and Donnie.

Donnie Yen's best swordsplay
Donnie Yen is the only reason to get this film really. Michelle Yeoh's peformance is that of a bitter jealous "adopted" sister. The movie focuses a lot on romance and drama leaving little room for true action, although it is present.

Donnie plays a drunken loaner, who's hopelessly in love with Michelle Yeoh. Aside from that, there's Tony Leung and his goofy wife. The rest of the cast is pretty cooky. This is a typical early 90s film for those of you familiar with the genre.

Good fighting scenes. Love story with twists.
The fighing scenes are fast, furious and violent. For example, in one scene, a fighter pushed his sword and his whole body completely through the chest of his oppenent.
The love story has some twists. What looked like the love between a sister and her younger brother turned out to be more than that.

Excellent! Among the best of Yeoh!
Excellent in action, acting, direction, screenplay... I can't remember how many times I have watched it. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Director Johnny Mak and company crafted an observant, naturalistic crime drama in the 1983 Long Arm of the Law. This sequel by director Michael Mak, made in the wake of the huge success of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow in 1986, shifts the tone toward fashionable romantic ultraviolence--and Mak lacks Woo's flair for operatic mayhem. Part 2 is a much more conventional, even pious commercial thriller, in which the hangdog mainland crooks become undercover operatives working for the cops. The touching bonds uniting the homeboy refugees in the original are replaced with a Woo-style bond of "sworn brotherhood" between ringleader Tung (Lam Wei) and a soulful tough cop (Alex Man). There are several effective body-slamming action sequences, but not much else of interest. The "American cultural imperialism" motif is carried over almost verbatim from part 1, with scenes staged in many of the same fast-food outlets. --David Chute ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Long Arm of the Law II (Provincial Flag Soldiers II)
GREAT MOVIE! CAUTION: This film has a ruthless, disturbing decapitation scene that is a must-see for all ultra-violent movie fans! Overall, this film was good, but short! Check it out! ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Island of Mess!
What a waste of money and a waste of time watching this badly directed mess.

Intensity and politics
Michael Mak makes very intense movies. He also incorporates a lot of human internal struggles, although not so much in this one.

Island Of Greed is about Taiwan's very tainted politics. In interviews Mak is very assured of the realism. It shows through the story, as some events are really familiar. But it's the movie-making, the story-telling, the actions that make this unforgetable. Incidentally, the current mayor of Taipei Ma Ying-Jiu is known to have done something like this.

Lau has certainly delivered the honest cop, but the best actings are from Tony Leung and Annie Wu. Quite phenomenal.

A great view into gang related matters in Taiwan.
This movie tells about a conflict between a powerful gang leader (Leung) and the police detective (Andy Lau) and his team. Leung's and Lau's characters struggle throughout the movie (lots of action) and at the end, we see that a gang leader is not as cold blooded as he seems. There is coarse language, violence, and some pornography in the movie but the message of the story is strong... ... Read more

Reviews (14)

If you see one Movie made in Hong Kong.....This is it
I didn't know what to expect from this movie when i first rented it...I thought it would probably be good for a laugh....wow....I was never more right. This movie is hilarious. I don't want to say too much to gve the plot away...thats half the fun of this movie....the plots shock value. All I will say is if a movie involving the most comical sex scene ever, very beautiful asian women, and a man who visits a drunken doctor for a very unusual (limb) transplant sounds entertaining....get this movie. And if that doesn't sound like your cup of tea...get it anyways. You wont be disappointed. I have made everyone I know watch this film and it has become a party favorite. If you dont find yourself laughing out loud at least a dozen times....check your pulse...your not alive.

What a thoroughly bizarre film.
Going solely by a few reviews here, I bought this film with the assumption that it would be a steamy comedy. While there are some very steamy scenes indeed, the "comedy" is so low-brow as to not even raise a chuckle.

...

While a couple of the sex scenes are very good, there is one that is basically a violent rape of a battered woman, and another that is very close to rape (although the women of course end up enjoying the experience, naturally.) There is also a forced abortion, and a woman being forced into slavery, some things I wouldn't expect to find in a comedy at all.

There are a couple of Buddhist sentiments tossed in at the beginning and at the end, but by and large, this is just soft core porn - the story line makes little sense, and is just a cheap way to get from one sex scene to the next. I'd expect that in flat-out pornographic films, but in something trying to pass itself off as something else...well, I was disappointed.

Some of the colors, fabrics and textures are very lovely, but it's obviously a low-budget film. The actors and actresses are generally attractive, and if all you want is some soft-core porn to pass an hour or so, this might just be your movie.

Bear in mind that it's subtitled, although with the level of diaglogue that's present, you might just as well leave it off.

Overall, very disappointing.

Chinese Baroque Commedia del Arte
Loosely based on the 17th Century erotic literary classic, *The Carnal Prayer Mat*, this film is at once an erotic, picaresque tale of adventure, and a Ch'an Buddhist morality play (of sorts).
Set in the late Yuan Dynasty (think: Kublai Khan), the film is a reasonably funny, and often very amusing farce, as well as a biting satire both of the manners and mores of a certain epoch in China. The film conjures up the cultural decadence at the tail-end of an age of great creative and imaginative vigor and growth...

The depths of degradation, despair and delusion are explored; ignorance, lust and aggression (the Three Poisons of classical Buddhist teaching) are present in abundance. Hallucinatory surreal scenes vie with ordinary profane reality; realism is set beside bizarre unorthodox fantasy in a mixture which recalls elements both of the Golden Ass and Don Juan, to use some (admittedly imprecise) Occidental points of reference.

In the end there is (an almost Christian) message of repentance (by the film's three principle rogues), forgiveness and redemption, but there is an equivocal sardonic irony in the message, as well.

A Chinese Picaresque Satire?
One puzzle about this film is the title: i.e. whereas there is a great deal of sex enacted in multiple variations (sometimes quite extreme) in this film, it is hard to discern the least trace of Zen, or its Chinese precursor, Ch'an Buddhism. The only overt expressions of Buddhism are of the most formalistic, prechy moralizing variety; a pietistic, perhaps ritualistic, mannerist caricature of Buddhism, perhapss--or perhaps rather a caricature of Roman Catholicism, or of any other petrified, formalistic religion. One suspects the influence of Spanish picaresque literature,...

Great fun!
If you are the kind of moviegoer who gets upset by the showing of breasts or have no sense of humor (especially the mature kind), you will not enjoy this movie. Otherwise, this movie is utterly entertaining. Lots of nice colors, beautiful women (especially Amy Yip and that Japanese actress), funny storyline, decent acting, all make this a classic that appeals to both mainstream and HK cult movie viewers. If there's a Chinatown near you you might want to get it there and save a few bucks. ... Read more