Kung Fu Killer
China is in unrest, as the Republic falls prey to Warlords like Kahn Xin, who holds an entire province hostage to the opium trade—and destroys all who oppose him. Only the revered Wudang monks dare stand in Kahn’s way in order to protect the very soul of China. Among them is the Westerner, White Crane, a spiritual master of the martial arts and protector of the innocent. Revenge is not in Crane’s heart—until a mercenary army storms the temple and slaughters the beloved female Grandmaster Myling. Out of the ashes of the temple ruins, Crane rises—with vengeance in his heart. Crane comes upon Jane Marshall, a New York lounge singer and her gangster boss Bingo Quo. But it’s Bingo’s dangerous professional ties to Kahn that draw both Crane and Jane deep into the Warlord’s lair. Now torn between the spiritual Wudang teaching and the cold-blooded life of an assassin, Crane is about the cross the fine line between justice and revenge.
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- Cast:
- David Carradine , Daryl Hannah , Kay Tong Lim , Lim Yu-Beng , Jimmy Taenaka , Osric Chau , Cheng Pei-pei
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Reviews
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Review of Part One: KUNG FU KILLER is a TV movie that seeks to win viewers by re-teaming two stars of Tarantino's KILL BILL films, David Carradine and Daryl Hannah. The result is a mostly unsuccessful little feature that lacks excitement or intrigue, happy instead to follow well-worn plot routes instead of carving out new territory.The biggest flaw with this film is the pacing. The film's frankly boring, a little action here and there not doing anything to change that. The film is book-ended by a couple of half-decent, large scale battles – owing much to the graphic climax of Stallone's RAMBO in terms of editing and choreography – but throughout the middle section, little occurs. David Carradine is playing pretty much the same character as he did in his television series KUNG FU, but he's a lot older here. Watching a guy in his 70s fight is not exactly something I enjoy doing, but Carradine acquits himself well and shows he's still got it. Sure, he's doubled on occasion, but I found his fight scenes more convincing than those in a recent Steven Seagal movie, for instance. The supporting cast don't make much of an impact, and Daryl Hannah, doing her own singing in the role of a, well, singer, is frankly terrible.KUNG FU KILLER's biggest strength is that it was actually filmed in China, so a lot of the scenery and locations are authentic. Sadly, these do little to distract from the ho-hum storyline. This was originally conceived of as a two-part miniseries, and a sequel, KUNG FU KILLER 2, follows the same characters in a new story. To add insult to injury, the version I saw was the heavily-edited children's version, which omits ALL of the graphic violence and bloodshed. This is another good reason for me not to like it.Review of Part Two: KUNG FU KILLER 2 is the second part of a miniseries that was broken down into two separate feature films for television release. The first in the series was a middling period martial arts would-be epic that had plenty of wasted potential; much the same can be said of the sequel. As the story kicked in I realised I was enjoying this a lot more than the first movie. There's a stronger storyline, even if it does follow the basic 'journey' template meted out by countless kung fu flicks of old, but it has incident, character, and extremely attractive surroundings. Added to that, the fight choreography seems slightly better and less choppy, too.Sadly, things fall apart in a big way at around the halfway mark, so much so that the film grinds to a halt and only lifts slightly for a lacklustre climax. There are heroes, villains, and some characters mid-way between the two, but by this time we can't really care about what's going on as the director has long before lost us. All of the first film's lead actors reprise their roles to middling effect, and of the new cast members, only Anya makes an impression as a layered villainess; she's great in the part.There isn't much of note here. Carradine hangs around and is surprisingly decent in the acting stakes, but he does little. Daryl Hannah is a complete waste of space, again. There are one or two genuinely decent fights, one or two bizarre interludes (such as the bits where the party fall foul of some killer courtesans and angry lepers), some lesbian undertones, and a muddled, gloomy ending. It's not absolutely awful, and the money's up on screen, but as with the first film, this could have been so much more.
Kung Fu Killer stars David Carradine as another 'Caine' type character from his beloved Kung Fu series.The television movie is actually co-written by David Seidler who would go on to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his next film, The King's Speech.Carradine plays a Caucasian monk called Crane in Shanghai who infiltrates the criminal underworld to find the killers of his spiritual female Grandmaster and thus gain his vengeance.Carradine was rather long in the tooth for some of the martial arts scenes but he acquits himself well. He joins up in this film with his Kill Bill accomplice, Daryl Hannah who plays a nightclub singer and romantic interest. Hannah is rather wasted in the glamour role especially given how vicious and striking she was in Kill Bill.Carradine has enough charisma to keep us the audience interested, after all we end up reminiscing about his Kung Fu series from our boyhood. The television film has a few good set pieces, the plot is rather hokey and the film is rather pedestrian even dull in places.
"White Crane" (Kung Fu Killer) is to me classic David Carradine doing his legendary "Kung Fu" only he's older. If any of you remember his TV shows "Kung Fu" in the 70's and "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" of the 90's in which Carradine fights in a majestic and powerful way and shares with you his words of wisdom then you should love this, if you have been brought up on the films of Jackie Chan and Jet Li where they jump around like they are on something hitting their opponents a dozen times without defeating them but some how winning in the end then you may not appreciate this style of Kung Fu movie. Daryl Hannah does a good job as a 1930s singer and looks the part and Osric Chau is excellent as a young Kung Fu student.
This rocks! Can't believe Spike went all the way to China to do one of its movies. Most of their stuff is lame but this looks like a real movie. Not a big Fan of Darryl Hannah but she did okay. Carradine was good, looked pretty strong. The Chinese girls were HOT. The story was solid but the best part was the action. Some of the fighting was insane and bloody so I got my moneys worth. Spike usually plays buckets of these old martial art movies but its good to see they're making them now. I'm just wondering what's the deal with the two movies. Was this supposed to be a series or something? If it is then maybe I'll watch it. My only complaint is they didn't show more of the hot girls.