Inspired effort - A Chinese Magnificent Seven!

Though really the main source of the material comes from Seven Samurai. This film is the 3rd remake of Kurosawa's most famous concept that I've heard of (though it was the 2nd to be made, the 3rd remake being Roger Corman's Battle Beyond The Stars - whose soundtrack had been lifted for the Kung Fu cult classic Hitman In The Hand Of Buddha).

This film was financed by the Hong Kong Martial Arts Association (or really the Hong Kong Kung Fu Council) so authenticity is assured but that doesn't mean to say the excitement is diminished because time and time again it's been shown constantly through the passages of time that authenticity doesn't mean entertainment because you can have someone who's a real martial arts master who won't look as good as someone who's not a real martial arts practitioner (Leung Kar Yan a.k.a. Beardy, John Liang, Brian Leung and Liang Chia Ren). Likewise with historical movies, you can get a film which is historically accurate that can prove to be a total bore but you can get a film which can be historically inaccurate that can be wildly entertaining.

The company who made the film (Goldig - who are still making films today) were, alongside Seasonal, one of the most successful indepedent companies of the era of Kung Fu filmmaking. Their other & more famous efforts are Snake In The Monkey's Shadow (which has two actors from this film - Charlie Chan and Pomson Chi) and Two On The Road (a.k.a. Fearless Dragons, which starred Leung Kar Yan, Johnny Wang Lung Wai and Philip Ko - who's in this movie playing the main villain, quite a contrast to his role in the similarly themed Legend Of A Fighter which was about Chinese VS Japanese sentiments).

The film opens with the obligatory sequence of having someone demonstrate their martial arts skills in front of the camera, though at least this sequence (alongside the opening sequence for Sammo Hung's Warriors Two) seems to show some purpose in regards to our understanding of what we're seeing on screen. The score for this sequence makes up for this. Speaking of score, Duel Of The 7 Tigers has one of the best scores I've ever heard in a Hong Kong film - I was quite surprised by some of the music cues chosen (despite only a few of them being derived from Drunken Master, but hey it's common for Hong Kong movies - especially ones that was made during this period of filmmaking). The music had a very poignant feel and really added that sense of epic grandure; speaking of epic grandure the film's production values are really at the forefront during this scene which takes place at the docks/junks (highly reminiscent of the sequence from Enter The Dragon).

The film features some unintentional humour in this fight between two monks (during a pivotal moment in the film where it's decided that the winner can be the new abbot but the loser has to leave the Shaolin temple hence the reason why Karate is invented thus introducing the racist antagonist). The humour involves this funny walk which the loser does as he's fighting the winner (a real-life Monkey Kung Fu stylist), it doesn't reach the same heights as John Cleese's funny walk routine yet the way the monk does it suggests that Wong Jing (the maverick Hong Kong director) must have been inspired by this as Stephen Chow does a similarly funny walk in the Wong Jing scripted/produced Sixty Million Dollar Man (a funny remake of Six Million Dollar Man {with numerous pop culture references aplenty} which seems to have inspired another remake of Six Million Dollar Man - this time starring Jim Carrey who seems to have made his career copying off Chow whilst developing his own schtick). But back to the walk, it involves criss-crossing one's legs over the other as one moves forward.

Another piece of humour in this scene with the two monks is when the loser monk is on the ground with his feet in the air while the other monk steps on his feet in a comical fashion (though there's no music or facial acting to indicate that this was intentional humour).

The winner monk is certainly impressive martial arts wise as he only seems to be 4 feet high! Also, there's a drunken boxer in this movie who is only 4 years old!! But by far the most impressive performer in this is the woman who accompanies our leading men and she has impressive skills with her legs (her opening segment during the beginning title sequence is a show-starter to say the least), she may not exactly be a female Hwang Jang Lee like the way Angela Mao almost was in the film The Two Great Cavaliers (which starred Chen Sing, John Liu and Leung Kar Yan) but she comes pretty close. Her scene in the film (which is also not only the most impressive scene in the whole film but also one of the most impressive in cinema history) where she spins these two metallic bowls whilst fighting is simply poetry in motion - if her earlier segment could be described as a show-starter then this segment is a show-stopper.

The lead actor, Cliff Lok, seems very familiar, maybe because he reminds me of a famous westerner but ultimately I've drawn to the conclusion that this guy looks a lot like Jimmy Wang Yu - the Clint Eastwood of Hong Kong cinema. So, for now, I'd say that Cliff Ko is like a Chinese John Wayne - there's something about his demeanour which says this!

The only flaws with this film are ones that don't seem to be associated with the people who made it. There's a cut in the film in which one of the main characters gets gouged in the eyes (this shot however remains in one of the flashbacks featured in the film's finale) so when it's shown that he's lost his vision it doesn't make sense until we see the finale where we witness the aforementioned flashbacks.

Come to think of it, if there was one particular flaw to be associated with the filmmakers it would be the fight scene with Casanova Wong which sets such a high standard that the subsequent fight scenes can only match, at best, rather than surpass. It almost seems like it came from another movie, not that it did but just it feels like as if they said 'Okay, let's hire Yuen Woo Ping & his boys for a day and shoot this killer fight scene!' but then again regardless of who the choreographers were there simply aren't that many martial artists who have that astounding prowess that Casanova displays here (he does 14-16 spinning kicks with one leg in one shot) thus that could explain the very few shortcomings the action has later on.

The film's look is presented in semi-widescreen so we don't quite get to see perfect coverage for the fight scenes (especially towards the end of the film as we some of the training sequences). Also, the opening credits are flawed in that whilst it was a good idea to pause the screen to accomodate the credentials of the martial artists on display, it's badly timed in the English print of the film (which is called Shadow Of The Tiger) so we miss something as we try to focus on either the action and the credits.

This film has an all star cast in that you have famous martial arts professionals and famous actors (especially character actors who you may recognize if you've seen a lot of Kung Fu films, the famous ones in particular) even if it's not exactly a film where the stars would have the same level of clout as you might expect with this being based on the same concept that was the focus point for John Sturges' classic western (for instance if the magnificent seven in this film was Sammo Hung, Gordon Liu, Dorian Tan Tao Liang, John Liu, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and Leung Kar Yan, I think the film would have been a smash hit - certainly if it had been directed by someone like Lee Tso Nam who {at this time when Duel Of The 7 Tigers was made} had been well known for his in-depth characterizations; of course there's a good chance that the film would have shared similar success if it had been directed by Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo Ping). If this had been made by the Shaw Bros. film company we would have had The Venoms actors (Lu Feng, Philip Ko, Chiang Sheng, Sun Chien, Lo Mang & Wei Pei) and Alexander Fu Sheng as the strong seven, with either Sun Chong, Liu Chia Liang, Chor Yuen or Chang Cheh as the director. Recently there's a film that was made by Tsui Hark called The Seven Swords Of Mount Tian which has more of an all star cast than what's featured here and it's probably fair to say that at least one of the above films must have been thought about in Tsui Hark's head as he was making this masterpiece of his.

Duel Of The 7 Tigers is a very good film even if it may not reach people's expectations of what they would have envisioned if there was to be a Kung Fu Magnificent Seven made in the late 70s.

Ralph Allen of www.beijingvideo.com seems to like this movie so much that he's listed it as one of his personal favourites so that might tell you something about the novelty this film has.

(REVIEWER'S NOTE: The reason why one of my reviews for Raw Deal was given a bad rating was because I tried to get it taken off by intentionally giving it a bad rating as it featured an error so I typed a 2nd review which had been taken off by accident but the error still needs to be corrected i.e. where it says bedroom room instead of bedroom).