Zen Kwan Do Strikes Paris (1979) User Reviews (3)

Odd

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 3 June 2023]

I'm kind of obsessed with John Liu. If all he did was New York Ninja or Ninja In the Claws of the CIA, I'd still be into him. But I keep finding his movies and they're all as strange as the next. What a shame that there's only one more that he made, Dragon Blood, for me to check out.

And yes, this also goes by a ninja title.

Avenging Ninja.

Beyond being the founder of the Zwen Kwan Do fighting system, Liu also directed and wrote this movie. And stars in it as himself.

Now you see why I'm so fascinated.

Liu was once a martial arts teacher but now he's part of the Hong Kong film world. Well, for now. Because his father, an American aerospace scientist, has just been kidnapped and now he has to go to Paris, as the title promises us. What it delivers is a plot that literally confounds all attempts to explain it.

Let me try.

Liu had a romantic scandal that rocked the world of Zen Kwan Do. He fell for a wealthy woman named Catherine and her father came after him, which left one lover dead, another as a nun and Liu's daughter somewhere out there, out where dreams come true like Fievel. But not in America.

Instead of finding his father, John fights goons. And fights a guy in an American flag gi. And fights more henchmen. He even fights when he goes to put flowers on Catherine's grave. And then he meets two girls who are pretty much going down on an ice cream sundae and he follows them onto a little yacht, gets knocked out and has to fight again, this time Roger Paschy, the same guy he's fought numerous times in this movie but never on a little boat before.

He mentions that he still has to find his daughter, but then the movie ends. What about his dad? Maybe he had another fight to get ready for.

Living up to the spirit of all martial arts movie that I love, this uses "My Way" and "Live and Let Die" with absolutely no concern for copyright. It also uses music from Lipstick - the disco music, not the baffling audio soundscapes that Chris Sarandon will sexually assault you to - and that really freaks me out in the best of all ways possible.

Honorable fighting, yes. Music rights, no.

There's nothing like a martial arts vanity project. I have no questions in my mind that the real John Liu also impregnated every woman in this movie and they all ended up in French convents too. Then he flashed that smile, titled down his sunglasses and screamed, "The Budokan spirit will never die!"

Vanity vehicle for star John Liu

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 16 February 2017]

Zen Kwan Do Strikes Paris is a hilarious vanity piece for martial artist John Liu, who decided to set up his own film production company for a trilogy of films made at various locations in Europe (including Spain and the Canary Islands). He was attempting to break into the foreign markets and become an international star along the lines of a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. Unfortunately for Liu, he didn't do very well and retired from the film business shortly afterwards. This one's a French-set affair that was also written and directed by the star, who plays himself. Narcissism reaches new heights in the early scenes in which supporting actors praise Liu for his various skills and martial arts abilities and at times this feels like nothing more than a vehicle on which to sell his own martial arts style, Zen Kwan Do.

Certainly the plot isn't up to much. Liu is a family man blighted by past tragedy and repeatedly challenged by a bunch of modern-day martial artists who don't seem to have much in the way of fighting ability. There's a lot of cutesy flashback scenes involving Liu romancing western women and some crushingly sentimental interludes featuring his real-life son. Liu's acting ability comes into question during these moments; let's just say he won't be putting De Niro in a sweat anytime soon. The film offers a mix of travelogue footage and gratingly routine fight scenes with the sum much less than the total parts, and it's not really worth your time.

No plot no story, just a mixture collage of random scenes of fights

[gymbyke · 1/10 · 20 March 2022]

This movie is an incredible experience of absurd and nonsense moments.

At the beginning John Liu, after parking his car on s hill of Hong Kong , is going for a walk and after one minutes there are three men challenging him to a fight. After easily and rapidly hiting all of them down to the dusty floor of the hill, guess what ? , John Liu logically goes back to his car. Then his master talks to him about John's decision to fly to Paris to rescue his father By the way , his father shall never appear in the movie and nobody knows where he is.

Another fighter, a certain Mr. Smith appears three times and introduces himself every time to John as if it were there very first meeting !

There is French woman murdered at the threshold of a swimming pool, and nobody understands who and why killed her . In her last word she asked him to tell the police she "committed suicide". Ah, ah, ah . What a crap !

Then , he was in Paris and then suddenly he is on the sea (is there the sea in Paris). He went to white boat and then he must fight again on a red boat . The boats are two , and after one minute the two boats are one. Unbelievable crap. It sucks from the first minute to the end. I have heard that John Liu understood that he was not talented to turn movies and now he retired to live in a wooden slum without electricity at the border of a river in Taiwan .

The very fantastic moment of the movie was when "they" (nobody knows whom) kidnapped his new euroasian girlfriend, but after one instant the next shot of the movie shows John laughing happily to think the same criminal because that girlfriend is now safe at home. No plot, just a collage and a mixture of random moments of martial fights without any link and without any logical sequence of facts. Pure crap !