petep Review of Brave Archer and His Mate

Brave Archer and His Mate (1982)

A mess but still fun (minor spoilers)

[6/10 · 25 April 2011]

Oh my god, I am nearly speechless over the 100 minutes of madness I just witnessed. No one will ever read this but I'm going to work my way through it. First of all, the description on some sites is accurate except for Fu Sheng's "cameo." He is indeed one of the leads, but just not in the first half hour. This was like 3 crazy movies put together. The first half hour is like this traditional and serious kung fu story starring Kuo Chue where he avenges his teachers. It's good but it's compressed, like an entire film into a half hour. Then many years pass and Kuo Chue is a teacher, along with his wife, and a very smart but mischievous Fu Sheng is one of their students. He encounters a villain from the film's opening and that causes some trouble. Then the last part has them taking Fu Sheng to a new school, but when they show up it's under attack by completely new enemies, and a really long back story is given for all of that. Oh, and being the 4th film in the Brave Archer story, where Fu Sheng played Guo Jing, the star in the previous 3 films, this time Kuo Chue (who I'm a big fan of anyway), takes over the title role, and Fu Sheng is playing someone else! Haha why would they even bother trying that? It was crazy, it was all crazy, and kind of a mess, but I love this genre, I love Chang Cheh, Fu Sheng, the venom mob... I'll give this a slightly positive score, but for even the plot alone you'll have to keep up on a ton of fast moving subtitles to try and make any sense of it all. As of this post I still haven't seen the 2nd and 3rd film in the series, but the 1st one is pure gold! Go check it out!!