King Eagle (Ying Wang)
One of the defining lone swordsman films follows the adventures of King Eagle, a solitary knight who becomes entangled with a pair of warring clans in medieval China. Refusing to take sides, he only avenges the innocent people harmed by the conflict and must ultimately unleash the fury of his sword while navigating between a pair of beautiful twins leading the clans, one beautiful and the other utterly evil. Kung fu legend Ti Lung (Legend of the Drunken Master, The Magic Blade) heads up this stunning exercise in flashing steel and relentless martial arts mayhem.
Member Reviews
Why this hasn't been remade as a western is mystery... - thesubstream
I'll bet you a hundred dollars (CAN) that you'll never in your life meet a huge science fiction film fan that hates samurai or western films. I mean, sure, these freaks must exist in a dark, slimy cave somewhere, but chances are that if they take their blinders off, they'll realize that Lucas' Star Wars, Kurasawa's Hidden Fortress and John Ford's The Searchers could all be shown in a triple bill of awesome genre flicks. When done well, this kind of genre filmmaking (with its weirdly requisite moral urgency) can rise above its particular generic tricks 'n' tropes to become storytelling in the classic mode, with heroes and journeys and villains and honour and justice and wise old people and peril and secret knowledge. Whether the hero swings a katana or a weilds a six-shooter is irrelevant, which says a lot about how universal and accessible these genre films can be. You don't need much in the way of context if your hero is heroic, your villain is villainous, and everybody seems to be fighting for something important.
I recently saw the incredible Shaw Bros. 1971 film King Eagle, which has a rock-solid story, barring a few hick-ups that I'm sure are the result of spotty translation. More than anything, King Eagle, a "Wuxia" tale set in ancient China reminded me of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. Only in this film, as with countless other great 1970's Shaw Bros. Kung Fu flicks, the locations are beautifully constructed studio sets, and the actors are all incredibly skilled stunt performers working together to weave an engaging tale of a lone swordsman righting wrongs... the first of many starring Ti Lung for the Shaw Bros. studio. There are none of Leone's classic vistas, unless you count the cardboard inside of a Hong Kong studio.
King Eagle is the nickname of an infamous loner swordsman/hero named Jin Fei (Ti Lung), who everone thinks is, well, just amazing. Because he is, mainly. He's a real hero: purity of heart coupled with u
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Why this hasn't been remade as a western is mystery... - thesubstream
I'll bet you a hundred dollars (CAN) that you'll never in your life meet a huge science fiction film fan that hates samurai or western films. I mean, sure, these freaks must exist in a dark, slimy cave somewhere, but chances are that if they take their blinders ...