the audience applauded

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The anti-Ching patriots, under the guidance of Ho Kuang-han, have secretly set up their base in Canton, disguised as school masters. During a brutal Manchu attack, Lui manages to escape and devotes himself to learning the martial arts in order to seek revenge.I do not happen to watch a lot of "kung fu" or martial arts films. But from what I understand, the Shaw Brothers made the best and this was among the best of the best. I can believe that, because it really has a sharp look to it while still being full of butt-kicking goodness. Which, you know, is what we want.I wish I knew more about the genre so I could recognize the names involved. Beyond Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen, I just do not know the martial arts world very well. Perhaps it is something to look into and then re-visit this film.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin showcases that sometimes it is style over substance. Sometimes a mere training montage, usually a short five to ten minute segment in the middle, can be stretched out to cover almost the entirety of the whole film, while still remaining a good movie.The story is very simple. Liu Yude (Liu Chia-Hui, or Gordon Liu as he's known in the West) is a simple student, whose teacher is brutally murdered for his anti-government views. And thus Liu Yude begins his journey to learn kung fu and become the legendary martial artist San Te in order to have vengeance. The rest of the movie is almost entirely various training sequences the monks put him through.And it is awesome! Strange it may sound, but in this case it needs to be seen to be believed. All the various exercises are massively outlandish, each one more unbelievable after another. Everything from running over water floating on nothing but reefs to ringing bells with a eight feet stalk of bamboo to carrying water with swords strapped to your elbows. And more and more until you want nothing more than to see what torturous training method they come up with next.Plus, the actual martial arts fights are phenomenal, Gordon Liu shines brighter than any kung fu actor before or since, the sets, locations and soundtracks are all state of the art and as a whole it's just a fantastic sports slash martials arts movie. Definitely worth checking out.

This is considered an all-time classic and, after seeing it for the first time, I more than see why. It's focused most of all on the training of martial arts, specifically the Shaolin style (if there is one, I could be wrong on that). We get the set up that the movie needs - a warlord crashes into a village, takes over (and called 'Tartars' no less), and a young man who is the son of a seafood shop-owner, runs off to get training with the Shaolin monks.For me, this may be the greatest action movie I've seen having to do with training. I don't know if it's a completely great film overall - by the third act some of the characters are a little over the top in their mannerisms who the new San Te (the masterful Gordon Liu, later utilized by Tarantino in the Kill Bill movies) wants to recruit for his "36th Chamber", which is only to train new monks.Of course one will have to wait for the sequel to see how the entire 36th Chamber operates. But for now, with this film, I'd say about over an hour in the middle, probably more, is just dedicated to showing how San Te grows through each and every Chamber. Every obstacle is gripping and wonderful to watch, some of them we see how rigorously he has to practice (walking across small logs on a small body of water is one of them, a highlight for me), and some of them are nearly ridiculous (how the older monks keep tapping for a wrist-tapping exercise on a gong which reaches a frenzied pace).I think though, certainly if one is in the mood for it, this is what I love seeing in a martial arts movie: growth, experience, gaining not always so much full attack strength but just the ability to focus or moving your eyes really quickly from one point to the next. Does the hero use all of these skills in the climax? Eh, maybe he will later if not now. It's just a lot of fun and it's exciting and almost kind of enlightening in a wholly B-movie way to see this guy become tougher and stronger and ready to be ready to defend AND attack.Oh, and the fights are bad-ass, to be sure, when they do finally come, as the director Liu Chiang-Lang (also the choreographer) cuts and shoots his fight scenes so that there's total intensity, but really it's all on the performers to make it work, not relying on the equipment. So, if you like some fast-zooms and some wicked sound fx and, most importantly, a story that is simple enough you can follow it (a problem sometimes with kung fu flicks for me is the plots are needlessly complex, not all but a good portion of them), 36th Chamber hits the spot. It's the kind of action flick that gave me energy after I watched it, like I wanted to do 100 push-ups or something. But I digress.

San Te is a student that finds himself rallying behind his teacher in resistance to the Manchu government. When many of his friends and family die as a result of the government's ruthless tactics San Te tries to become a Shaolin monk in an attempt to learn Kung Fu in order to gain revenge on the Manchu officials.36th Chamber is a brilliant martial arts film. It is artfully directed and edited and endlessly entertaining containing some of the most interesting "training scenes" that I have seen in a martial arts film, or any film for that matter. The fight choreography is almost completely flawless throughout and each fight seems to tell a story or have a purpose in the overall narrative. There isn't fighting for fightings sake. While that may sounds like a drawback it certainly isn't. Also, while seemingly a revenge flick 36th Chamber is more about the power of learning and teaching. The vast majority of the film contains some element of teaching or implementing teachings in one form or another.The brilliance of the directing and editing is that one San Te starts learning to become a Shaolin monk he has to pass 35 Chambers to do so. Now obviously showing all 35 Chambers on film in their entirety would probably make for an exorbitantly long film here the first 6 or so chambers are focused on showing San Ta's tackling of the "easiest" of the chambers to increase his strength and dexterity. The later chambers are handled more quickly and the process of each is shown through other characters enduring the tests while San Te is shown to be mastering them. Seen in its entirety this entire section of film is quite brilliantly directed and edited. In addition, later when San Te exhibits the different things he has learned in his fights it is done without a "remember that?" type flash back like other films have done. The film assumes we are smart enough to remember or merely uses similar camera cuts and angles from the training sequences to aid in recall.