Polly Shang Kwan, perhaps the most beautiful of all the Asian female action stars of the 1970s (yes, above even Angela Mao), stars in this action-packed contemporary revenge tale, and gets into a kung fu scrap roughly every 5 minutes! (Just ignore the fact that nobody in this movie, including the gangsters, even thinks of using a gun until very late). Her father was killed because he had a certain diamond in his possession, but before he died he passed it on to one of his friends. So now Polly is looking for the diamond AND her father's killers. Luckily for her, she has badass fighter and nightclub singer (!) Yasuaki Kurata to assist her. The action is rather crude, but plentiful, and the film culminates with one of the LONGEST mixed fights ever, starting on foot in the middle of the night and then (through some careless, to say the least, continuity) continuing in broad daylight with a bike vs. car chase, then a boat vs. larger boat chase, and finishing on foot again, in a completely different location, on land, in the water, everywhere! You certainly can't accuse "Seven To One" of being lazy; it works hard to give you what you came for. **1/2 out of 4.
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gridoon202425 September 2010
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SEVEN TO ONE is a little-known but entertaining kung fu movie featuring the fresh-faced Polly Shang Kwan who natural beauty shines through throughout the production. She plays the daughter of a man murdered for his priceless jewellery, with the twist that his diamond ring survived falling into the wrong hands thus kicking off a battle for the possession of it.
The film has a contemporary '70s setting so there's a lot of street action and cool fashions with wide collars. The soundtrack is pretty funky too with a musical version of Bread's I Want To Make It With You added to the mix. What's notable about SEVEN TO ONE is just how much action it continues. The fight scenes are endless and literally pop up about every five minutes, typically featuring Kwan taking on a gang of thugs and beating them mercilessly.
Kwan is aided in this respect by Yasuaki Karata, the Japanese fighter, surprisingly playing a nightclub singer with a fine line in martial arts. The pacing remains fast right up until the extended climax which mixes brawling battles with high-speed chases by speedboat and the like. It's good stuff that very nearly matches rival fare from Shaw Brothers being made during the era. -
deluca.lorenzo@libero.it31 December 2020I rate this a broken 6 just for the cast, including Phoenix Shangkuan Lingfung Jap badguy Kurata, supermartialist Steve Lee Ka Ting and future legend Bruce Leung Siu Lung, all involved in a modern-day crime thriller where the deceiving Kurata plays the good guy that allys with the heroine at first, just to reveal himself as her toughest enemy. The wrong plot summary said this was set in contemporary China, so I corrected it since everybody knows (or should do) that China was a communist regime that prohibited not only the making, but also the importation of Martial Arts films from foreign countries like Hong Kong and Taiwan, and Martial Arts movies of 70's came exactly from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Seven to one's director Hou Cheng and actor Kurata teamed-up again the same year for the slightly better Unsbudued Furies.