This has some great fight scenes. Lo Meng, as usual, is amazing. Johnny Wang Lung Wei as the villain (?) also has some good scenes. The plot is all over the map. Wang Yu has some good funny scenes, which are to be expected from him. I don't not understand the ending at all. There was an obvious mission to be completed, but the movie ends absurdly. I would only recommend this for diehard fans of Lo Meng, Wang Yu and Johnny Wang Lung Wei willing to watch ANYTHING in which these men appear. Otherwise...re-watching a Venom movie is a better idea.
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dafrosts11 April 2018
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Leofwine_draca7 December 2016Nobody is going to admit that LION VS. LION is one of the best Shaw Brothers movies out there. There are plenty better, films that don't suffer from a slightly disjointed and episodic storyline or sub-plots that don't really go anywhere other than to drag the pacing down a little. However, I also found it to be an underrated film, one which still provided fitful entertainment value and is thus subsequently worth a watch for action fans. I've yet to find a Shaw film that I haven't enjoyed, although I'm sure they do exist.
This film has a bit of everything, with the usual intrigue involving Qings and Manchus and the hunt for a secret item, in this case some kind of imperial edict. The title comes from an elaborately staged lion dance contest which takes place around the hour mark. It doesn't add much in the way of plot, but it does provide great spectacle and it amuses me to see the mini-craze for this kind of thing with even Jackie Chan jumping on the bandwagon at some point.
I found the earlier part of the film more effective than the later. Lo Meng is a reliable hero; he was of course one of the original Venoms, and I always think it's a pity he wasn't in more of their films because he always looks great when he's fighting on the screen and he can act too. Wong Yue is here too in a more comedic and less action-oriented role than usual. There's a nice role for the little-known Wang Lung Wei who always seemed to be in the best Shaw films. The secret identity of the villain will be obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the film's cast, but the twists and turns are still fun to see. The fights are solid and at the same time a bit unremarkable. The abrupt ending is incredibly dark and seems to come out of nowhere; it has to be seen to be believed. -
BrianDanaCamp29 September 2001***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** ROAR OF THE LION (1981) boasts three top kung fu stars and is generally well shot and staged but suffers from a mess of a script that never quite gets its plot off the ground. It offers an impressive recreation of a traditional Lion Dance competition, but this sequence is unannounced, comes out of nowhere, and has no dramatic connection to anything that preceded it. A subplot about a Ming patriot (Wang Lung-Wei) trying to get hold of a two-part coded list of patriot names is not developed until the end (when a key character inexplicably turns out to be a traitor) and hardly involves the two main characters at all.
Wong Yue (THE YOUNG AVENGER) plays a con man who is so reckless that he pulls an elaborate con on his own boss and promptly loses his job (at a funeral home). He hooks up with a kung fu fighter--a constable fired by a corrupt official--and starts a gym for kung fu training. The fighter is played by Lo Meng, the muscular member of the Five Venoms, who is on his own here with no help from the other Venoms. Wong's scenes with Lo are overly comical (without being funny), which makes the tragic ending unnecessarily jarring.
About an hour into the film, the two heroes compete in a Lion Dance (without ever rehearsing) against a rival school headed by Wang Lung Wei, win the competition after an instance of blatant cheating, and, in a contrived twist, get hold of the second half of the patriots' list, forcing a showdown with Wang, who had been presented as a good guy up to this point.
There are at least four worthy fights, all expertly staged, but none has any emotional underpinnings or dramatic urgency. Lo Meng, always the best fighter of the Venoms, is a joy to watch in battle, as is the always dependable Wang Lung-Wei. Wang has a good fight with Chen Yueh Sheng (aka Chien Yuet San), who also served as the film's co-writer-director-fighting instructor (with Hsu Hsia). But, again, their fight has no meaning, because Chen's character is never adequately identified or explained. Yang Pan Pan, the leading lady, and Wang's erstwhile partner, does an impressive job of fighting also. Overall, however, this Shaw Bros. production is well below average and, at 108 minutes, way too long. -
ChungMo30 March 2006Kung fu movies are not generally known for their story lines. Usually the story serves as a good reason for the characters to get into a set of exhilarating encounters. If we didn't get a good fight then it's just another melodrama and we can find those anywhere. But what happens when the story isn't even there? This is a very good example. Unlike most Shaw films and directed by a team consisting of one of the supporting martial artist/actors who apparently never directed again and a director from outside the Shaw studios, one can only guess at how the film ended up this way.
The setting is the usual Manchus versus Hans, nothing new here. Yue Wong plays his stock conman rascal and Lo Meng plays his stock naive good guy. Yu Wong does not play a martial artist unlike his other roles. Wang Lung Wei fills the powerful bad guy role although he starts out as a resistance fighter. The movie starts out very quickly paced and very broadly acted. The filming style is well done but unlike other films out of the Shaw studio. It's rather silly but enjoyable for the first 45 minutes when the film looses it's footing and grinds to a halt with an extended "comedy" sequence. It picks up with an inexplicable but well-done Lion dance fight and quickly turns sour as the film's light tone is replaced with death and mayhem.
The only saving factor at this point would be the fight scenes. While the expertise and grace of the actors are superb, once again the film deviates from the usual Shaw studio style. The fights suffer from a "one-two-three, one-two-three" choreography that you usually see from other HK studios of the time. It's not a problem at first but as the film starts to drag on it gets tiresome. There are some terrible examples of sped up film that clown up what were intended to be serious fights. And there's a serious fight scene with a weapon so absurd your head will spin. What was in the directors' heads?
While the production standards are very good, the disjointed story makes this one, "Not Recommended".