Best martial arts movies

It was Zhang Yimou's answer to Ang Lee's American styled Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. A Chinese film, that was accessible to outsiders, but never compromised being Chinese to attract a foreign audience. Its cool that one of the world's greatest filmmakers does Martial Arts films. I think his follow up to this was arguably just as brilliant.
What's American-styled about Crouching Tiger? Honest question, I've seen some Chinese film but I'm not an expert. Hero does seem more Chinese to me in that it's directly based on a legend regarding the first Emperor.
 
I thought Carradine did a great job. I love this movie. Totally agree on the budget and costumes, but part of the charm for me was the low budget feel.
Yeah David was great in this this was a beautiful movie about Zen philosophy I feel you on the low budget thing but some of the costumes were meh esp the monkeys
 
People give Seagal tons of crap nowadays, but back in the day, he had some good, action packed movies...his style was very different than other martial artists...but under seige, hard to kill, above the law, all good movies.
Totally agree. Above The Law in particular really stood out. Story was decent, the villain was good, and that hard aikido style they used looked great on film. The fight scenes were intense.
 
May be not the best, but worth mentioning.

YamadaSamuraiAyothaya.jpg
 
I watched A Fistful of Talons the other night. Pretty fun and the very end is amazing. Good, trashy kung fu flick.
 
If you want some quick youtube videos to watch, I liked this guys stuff:

 
recently it has to be the Raid and John Wick movies for me
 
The Man From Nowhere

My Wife Is A Gangster

The Berlin Files

A Company Man

Merantau - starring the Indonesian guy from The Raid and Raid Redemption.

The Suspect - Korean action flick starring the main actor from Train to Busan.

Tai Chi Master (Jet Li flick).

Muscle Heat starring Shane Kosugi.

Ninja Girl with Rina Takeda is worth at least a one time watch.

Iron Monkey (not the one with Donnie Yen, a different movie starring Chen Kwan Tai).

There is this Chinese movie called So Close that has some decent fight scenes. I particularly enjoyed the boss fight with Yasuaki Kurata who played as Mitsuko Yamada's uncle Funakoshi Fumio in Fist of Legend. That boss fight has awesome Samurai swordsplay in it.

Before I forget, I like almost anything with Dragon Lee.
 
Lol the shit they used to pass off as movies in the 80's was great.

A friend of mine showed me this gem of a scene a while back.



1. Lmao great scene!
2. Dan Hornbuckle is from the same area as me.
 
What's American-styled about Crouching Tiger? Honest question, I've seen some Chinese film but I'm not an expert. Hero does seem more Chinese to me in that it's directly based on a legend regarding the first Emperor.

In short, the whole movie is about individualism, which is anathema to the Wuxia genre and the larger Chinese culture the genre comes from. Hero, on the other hand is about sacrificing self for the greater good of the collective, a Chinese essential. Add to Crouching, the sex, the "political" feminism, and the outright rejection of chinese warrior code by some of the characters, its little wonder the movie bombed in China.



Zhang Yimou called Crouching “a misunderstanding of the tradition of the genre and with the complacent desire of making a film for foreigners.” which was what prompted him to make the vastly superior Hero.



Now not to say that Crouching did not have its merits, (though in my opinion it was outclassed in every way by Hero), but it was obvious that the film was made to satisfy western audiences who knew little about Chinese culture.
 
Back
Top