The Deadliest Art
This action compilation was produced by Fred
Weintraub (produced Enter the Dragon) with the cooperation of Golden Harvest.
The film is full of terrific action scenes, but because of the sponsorship
of Golden Harvest the scenes used are all Golden Harvest films. This of course
leads to a fairly narrow scope in which none of the Shaw films are represented.
Even taking this into account, it seems that there could have been a much
greater diversity of films. Probably some 80% of the film is devoted to the
movies of Jackie, Sammo, Yuen and Bruce Lee. One other complaint is that
they bring no real historical perspective to the narration. You get no sense
of how this is all connected.
This is not necessarily a problem depending on what you want as there are
amazing clips of many of their films here. Since this was compiled in 1990,
there are obviously no post-1990 works of theirs here. The quality of the
film is very clean though it is not widescreen.
There are a few other welcome side streets that this film goes down and a
few unwelcome ones. Clips from Michiko, Angela Mao, Yukari Oshima, Duel to
Death are excellent.
So this is basically for Seven Fortune fans. If you are a fan of theirs,
this is a nice compilation of many of their fights.
