CompleteMartialArts.com - The Legend of the Wolf AKA The New Big Boss
|
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $10.40
Your Save: $ 14.55 ( 58% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Jumbo Plain Laser & Video Co.
Starring: Ben Lam, Carman Lee, Edmond Leung, Chi Wah Wong, Donnie Yen
|
Average Customer Rating:   
|
|
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0601643542744
Format: Color
Label: Jumbo Plain Laser & Video Co.
Manufacturer: Jumbo Plain Laser & Video Co.
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Jumbo Plain Laser & Video Co.
Region Code: 0
Release Date: 1999-11-16
Running Time: 94
Studio: Jumbo Plain Laser & Video Co.
Theatrical Release Date: 1997
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: I will never by any martial arts movie filmed in the 80's again.
Comment: I will never by any martial arts movie shot in the 80's again. This is one of them. The fighting scenes are bad, slow and mostly in close-up. So, you can hardly see what's happening. The sound is dull and full of noises. I bought it because I like Donnie Yen but he could not save the film either.
What a waste of time and money!
Customer Rating:
Summary: stuck between a 3 and a 4
Comment: The movie is absolute briliance if you look at the budget. $500,000!!!!!!!
Now if you are a kugn fu fan then you NEED to get this. Fans of Iron Monkey may enjoy the super revved up action, but even if you don't like it when they majorly undercrank films, this may still catch your eye.
The movie is all a flashback story. Donnie Yen is old and is telling a kid a story about when he was young and lost his memory. By the end both stories get wrapped up very nicely. But the end scene absolutely blew me away. There is somethign that happened right before the final fight scene that boosted this up to a 4. I guess I wasn't expecting any real movie moments, but this had a hell of a lot of them.
Now the action scenes I have to say are one of a kind. There is a match with a guy who is usign chains to fight donnie, that was my favorite. ALL of teh fights are unreal but awesome. The one with the guy using like monkey or tiger style was INTENSE. If you are prone to seizures then I highly suggest you do not get this movie.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A seriously twisted case, but a Martial Arts masterpiece of nineties!
Comment: Other reviewers have allready pointed out that LoW:s plot is not so hot. I think it manages and that the use of music is great and the camerawork make the film a pleasure to watch thorough. There are some neat references to several Tsui Hark films and by all accounts, this film was made almost the same time as Hark's Dao the Blade, so comparisons are inevitable. Legend of the Wolf was made with a smaller budget and it's an original story.
Donnie hits his head and loses his memory. The whole film is generally a flashback, which is not the easiest way to do your McKungfu-film.
But the really great part is the action and I'm a action fan, so I write a review for those people who share my passion. If you don't like the plot (which I do), do NOT skip this if you like HK-style action!
The undercranking may annoy some people, but I think this films action REALLY demands repeated viewings. There is a lot attention to detail, Donnie uses several great effects to make contact look more brutal and realistic; the slow motion is used in GREAT effect everywhere, and so is Yen's editing, which he of course did himself. He spent 3 months to get everything right and it really shows. I do not know a MA film that has as ambitious editing as this one.
The last scene is built very well. First people get slaughtered in the village, then Donnie starts to whack people like no tomorrow. Girl is kidnapped and the evil gang run to the forest and Donnie whacks them with imaginative ways. Cool stuff, filmed brilliantly, music fits in very well and Donnie looks good, as always.
The real GEM is the next scene! Donnie fights a monkey kungfu man in a 5-minute fight, which has exhilarating speed and INSANE choreography. They go everywhere, monkey guy has ninja-like metal claws so Donnie has to change his tactics. After a brief part of Chin-Na (chinese joint locking) Donnie goes into kicking mode and camera work like a damn mozart! The fight goes on to amazing whack fest, where Donnie just beats the living daylights out of his opponent and does awesome kicks to finish him off. Like in other scenes, apart from undercanking (which may annoy some, I understand) is bloody perfect. You can see absolutely everything, every move, tactic, you name it. What's the best thing is that it's not your typical normative YWP (Yuen Woo Ping) chick slap party but a real deal from start to finish. It'll make you sweat, I swear!
If this scene was compared to the much riveted last fight in Blade, I'd pick this one, every time. It's not that Man Cheuk's and Xing Xiong scene is bad, it's just that this is one of the best modern fights I've ever seen. And I've seen a few.
The end scene sums it up, really. Donnie fights Ben Lam (form Jackie Chans stuntman and star of a couple films) on field and it's time for emotion! They just go brutally at each other with great slo-mo, little undercranking, with knees and elbows clashing everywhere. There is a AWESOME shot where both actors do a flying roundhouse kick each other leg, while camera just zooms out of thme. It's poetic!
Overall, it's a good film, I liked it. The plot was rather hard to follow but had a point. The real treat was tha rather unique action, which has been called as "a Donnie style", which IMO shows here to the greatest effect. In Legend of the Wolf, he just uses about every known camera trick of the book and edits things in a way no-one can. An unique MA film that remains for many the TRULY last classic of Hong KOng kung fu cinema, before things went down, hard. The DVD is bare bones, but I bought it anyway. Just awesome action.
Customer Rating:
Summary: bad sound effects + subtitles almost destroy this movie
Comment: THE PLOT: Donnie Yen loses his memory and loses his girl twice in the movie. All he can do is howl at the moon...like, well, a wolf. But after he loses her the second time, he plays an assassin and kills only for the good of one's life...like say, if you have superhuman accuracy throwing knives to help your new buddy in danger while trying to uncover your past , which may be very dark and complicated from amnesia. Although, luckily, he cant remember that past. His buddy we learn, who sets up this story, is his right hand man for setting up assassin meetings. We also start getting a sense of Bruce Lee in the dialogue and mostly through action.
Donnie Yen is a self-proclaimed Bruce Lee fan and this movie plays a little like a kid showing off to his friends how much better he is at pretending to be him than they are--the high-pitched squeals, the muscles, the fast kicks, the angry grimaces. Having studied in a well developed martial arts backround even under the same teacher as Jet Li helps too. On the set of Lee's first movie, his nick name was "three-kick" Lee because they thought that was as many kicks as he knew, and its as though his untimely death only left us with three kicks as a memory.
And metaphorically, i would say Hong Kong cinema is "the friends", and Donnie Yen is that "kid" show off. Yen's "The Legend of the Wolf" is probably the best at being Bruce Lee that I've seen besides "Dynamo" (1978)which comes in a nice Yuen Clan two-movie-1-disc DVD set along with "Drunken Tai-chi", a classic starring Yen. His very untimely death helps the movie out kind of.
That movie was very convincing because the costumes were the same as Lee's "Game of Death" and a lot of the famous "Bruce Lee" moves were taken and used in the film. This movie is convincing because its showing Donnie Yen's Wushu martials arts mixed with Lee's "martial arts"--substitue Wing Chun for Wushu and you get what i mean. And this movie uses the old Bruce-Lee-taking-on-a-crowd-of-bandits just as well too. No points for guessing a guy with claws on his hands appears in the movie too.
review number 2
well done cartoon-like violence with murky story; digital camera in need, 5 June 2005
7/10
Author: shistboy from United States
Donnie Yen plays the wolf from the title of the movie and does a competent directing job, if only there was a good script to go with it. The high-pitched squealing, the hero kicking his way through 15 encompassed bandits and the claw of the bad guy all may remind you of someone. Needless to say, Yen beats his enemy down at the end climactic fight scene who is not the claw man by the way.
It may or may not be well known in the states that Donnie Yen is a Bruce Lee fan, but it will be known after seeing his "Legend of the Wolf"--we may mistake the two. Of course, Bruce Lee only made 4 movies and only directed one very modest film--not completely capturing his talents enough, I think, for the west to appreciate fully.
I say this because this film plays like a well made Bruce Lee movie most of the time, then, however, comes the flashes of super fast-paced action that I can only describe as "Dragonball Z" speed fighting. These bursts surpass the speed of the camera. This is the first directorial effort I have seen by Donnie Yen and if his other films have fight choreography at this tempo, then I think he may need to get a digital camera...it's cheaper anyway.
i have neglected the plot, but so have the writers. Who is this wolf, anyway? Why is he called the wolf? He is an assassin who with a sidekick--who steals the show a lot of the time (played well by Dayo Wong)--tries to explain to a shady new client that killing may not be the best answer...uh, huh. The story: in the dark lit opening scene, Yen (face unseen) decapitates the leader of a gang from the shadows who is about to murder some girl but is seriously injured by a gunshot wound before he jumps out the window getting a lifelong case of amnesia making him forget the whole reasons why he was exactly there in the first place--even his girlfriend too. He finds his girlfriend again thanks to his soon lifelong sidekick-to-be who knows her. He gets another chance at rescuing her again from the very same bandits at the end of the movie while distracting wolf hounds howl in the background to his running them down. hmm, interesting. He loses his girlfriend twice in the movie, and for real the second time. All he can do is howl at the moon in sadness. Close enough. But wait a minute, if he can't remember his girlfriend, how do they connect when he sees her again? The answer to this is why she dies at the end of the film...some answer, huh? The new bandit leader tells him after the chase action sequence--at the worst possible time--who he really is and why they suddenly want to get revenge on him...his revenge is brutal.
If thats not murky enough, we find out that his new client may simply be trying to be the number one killer assassin himself which may involve killing Yen. Of course, he is going to learn the hard way, as with everyone else in this movie.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Film by a Great Martial Artist
Comment: When I heard about this movie and heard that Donnie Yen starred in it, I went to Amazon.com to read some reviews. To my surprise all the reviews were negative towards the film and so I grew hesitant as to buying it. Being a Donnie Yen fan I went ahead and bought it anyways. When the movie finally arrived at my home I hurry up and pop the movie in that night. Behold to my surprise this film was marvelous. The story was alright...it wasn't great but not that bad. Donnie plays as a man named Wolf who is an assassin in the present time, however the movie have flash backs. In the flash backs he is some sort of "soldier" who lost his memories. It's a twist in the movie that's not really surprising. As you can see the story is not the strong point of the movie, it's the action that is. Donnie Yen is the producer and director of this film. As many have said the action scenes are shot close up and plus the fights are a little sped up as well. People find these as flaws, however I don't. The fights are not sped up to the point the fights look comical, but to a point that it looks beautiful and strong. The people that are hunting Donnie down are very impressive in skills. His first challenge is with a man who uses chains that's wrap around one of his arms. One of my favorites will have to be the fighter with the claws; really nice hand to hand combat I must say. Overall the film is really nice if you are a big fan of Donnie Yen. If you are not a fan of his and just want to see a nice martial art flick with almost super human speed watch this movie.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|