Review: The Blood Brothers


Aimless small-time bandits David Chiang and Chen Kuan Tai bond with a more upscale bandit (Ti Lung), who later remembers and the duo (and Cheng Li, Chen’s wife, whom he has a tentative affair with) when the ambitious man becomes a top general in the Qing army. But as Lung becomes more and more ambitious, his relationship with his two ‘blood brothers’ and love for Cheng Li becomes increasingly complicated, and something has to give.


Colourful 1973 Cheh Chang (or Che Zhang) martial-arts saga for the Shaw Brothers plays like “House of Flying Daggers” done three decades before. Ti Lung (whom you might recall as one of the leads in “A Better Tomorrow” from 1986) is particularly good, but some of the other performances are a bit spotty, with the romantic subplot a tad melodramatic (as it tends to be these days as well, in films like “Flying Daggers” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”). But who cares, when the martial arts is so good and the film so attractive and effectively staged (especially for the time it was made)?


The screenplay is by the talented Ni Kuang, scribe of the bizarro superhero film “Infra-Man”, the slightly fantastical martial arts film “The Magic Blade” and the just plain awesome “Eight Diagram Pole Fighter”. This isn’t the equal of “Eight Diagram Pole Fighter”, but nonetheless it’s a must for fans of this kind of thing..


Rating: B-

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