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Excellent but underrated film

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Sadly I found more things wrong than right with this early Golden Harvest movie. Character-wise the villains just did not seem that bad and the heroes did not seem that heroic. Guns and martial arts just don't mix especially in the conclusion to a final fight. It's well known that many of these movies were filmed sequentially therefore the fights tend to get better toward the end. With the talent involved, particularly with Jackie Chan in the first fight sequence, this should not have happened but it did. Worse, the fights only got a little bit better toward the end. This was simple stuff too, lack power and focus, and total failure to make any fight look any different from the previous fight. Finally the running time was just too long. It seemed as if they went to all this trouble to build a set then they were going to show you the whole set, even if it meant pointless walking from one end to the other. I would recommend this for completists only.

The VCD case says KUNG FU GIRL, the on-screen title is NONE BUT THE BRAVE, and the title on the English dub that played in the U.S. in 1974 was ATTACK OF THE KUNG FU GIRLS. Whatever it's called, all you really need to know about it is that it stars Cheng Pei Pei and it was her first film at Golden Harvest after she'd left Shaw Bros. after completing THE SHADOW WHIP (1971) for director Lo Wei, who also directed this film. Lo Wei had left Shaw after THE SHADOW WHIP also, but had made eight films at Golden Harvest in the interim, including Bruce Lee's first two starring vehicles. Cheng Pei Pei would make one more film for Golden Harvest (WHIPLASH) before taking a nine-year hiatus from the screen.The star has quite a number of good kung fu scenes. She fights hand-to-hand here after relying chiefly on swords or whips in her Shaw films. She even uses a gun a few times. She does many of her own stunts including some that are a bit riskier than she was used to at Shaw. The film is set in Beijing in the early years of the Chinese Republic at a time when President Yuan tried to get himself declared Emperor and was secretly making deals with the encroaching Japanese. Cheng Pei Pei plays Shao Ying, a leader of a small resistance unit, and she goes to Beijing to meet Captain Lei (Wei Au) of the Investigation Bureau and impersonate his long-lost sister. He falls for it and she uses her position in his household as a means of getting information to find imprisoned rebel leader Tsai. She meets the Japanese Consul, who takes a liking to her and she has to feign interest in him in order to keep up appearances. In the course of it most of her rebel compadres get caught and imprisoned until, finally, it's up to her alone to find Tsai and free him.It's quite a convoluted plot and I couldn't understand everything that happened, partly because of the lack of translation of signs and handwritten notes, which carry a lot of import here. The subtitles on the worn print used for this VCD transfer (from the Fortune Star Legendary Collection line) are unreadable in many places due to white titles on a white background or just being so faint as to lose part of the letters. In one scene, a written message is smuggled to a rebel leader operating undercover. He then goes somewhere masquerading as a bun vendor and is quickly surrounded by undercover police who arrest him. Since the note was untranslated we don't know whether he heeded the message or not. But it does seem kind of stupid to go to all that trouble only to have him so easily captured. This kind of thing happens often enough in the movie that we wonder what the point of having a spy in the captain's house is if everyone gets captured anyway. Eventually Shao Ying has to use the favor she's gained with the Japanese to solve the mystery of Tsai's location.Cheng Pei Pei was directed by Lo Wei in so many better movies at Shaw Bros., including DRAGON SWAMP, SHADOW WHIP and BROTHERS FIVE. However, the fight scenes here are much more rigorous and she does show great aptitude as a fighting star even if her brief tenure at Golden Harvest was overshadowed by the studio's true kung fu diva, Angela Mao. (Interestingly, I saw this film, under its U.S. release title, ATTACK OF THE KUNG FU GIRLS on a double bill at a Times Square theater in 1974 where it played with STING OF THE DRAGON MASTERS, the Angela Mao vehicle better known as WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES.) Lo Wei appears on screen in a key supporting role as Commissioner Wu, Captain Lei's superior and the one most eager to kowtow to the Japanese. Jackie Chan appears in a small role as a Japanese bully who gets beaten up by Shao Ying in a Beijing restaurant. Japanese actor Jo Shishido (A COLT IS MY PASSPORT, ASIA-POL) plays the Japanese Consul and has a fight scene at the end with Cheng Pei Pei.

Chinese female action icon Cheng Pei Pei is famous for her Shaw Brothers films and her break-out feature was "Come Drink With me" and its sequel "Golden Swallow". The former is probably one of the greatest Chinese adventure films of the 60s and 70s.So it was kind of surprising to see her in a Golden Harvest film. Maybe her Shaw contract had run out at this time. Anyways, Lo Wei directed this. He also directed Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury and he's obviously trying to strike similar gold here. In fact there are many plot elements lifted directly from FoF and Cheng Pei Pei even does a few Bruce-isms. Very strange. However she's not Bruce Lee and so isn't quite able to keep the narrative energy afloat. Actually much of Lo Wei's direction is pretty boring. I actually like Lo Wei's earlier Shaw productions a good bit, but at Golden Harvest, for whatever reason, his direction just seems lackluster. Bruce Lee could save an industrial safety film. If you've seen his screen test for Green Hornet you can see how intense he was even when not acting.I love Cheng Pei Pei but against so much inertia even she couldn't save this from being non-essential. On the up side, she has some ferocious hand-to-hand fights. That was unique to see because she's largely known as a swordswoman and I'd never seen her do weaponless kung-fu before. Again, she's no Bruce, but she has a certain intensity (at least during the fight scenes) which elevate just those scenes.Oh yeah, the plot is basically this: Cheng Pei Pei and her friends pretend to be be relatives to an official, but in reality they are revolutionaries trying to save their leader from captivity. The Chinese officials are also in cahoots with the Japanese, so there's a big Fist of Fury connection right there. My recommendation is to fast forward through the talky bits and just watch the scenes where Cheng Pei Pei kicks everybody's ass all over the place. Acting-wise this is definitely one of her lesser roles. Oh yeah, she fights the action choreographer of the film too, just as Bruce did in FoF.

Director Lo Wei was obviously attempting to duplicate his success of "Fist of Fury (The Chinese Connection)" but with a female heroine, as this film contains several situation elements and cast members similar to that earlier film, plus the same martial arts director. By any standard, this is clearly one of the half-dozen best female kung-fu films of the 70's. The story takes place in China during World War II, with the heroine battling unarmed against Japanese and collaborators. If you have only seen Cheng Pei-Pei in her villainous role as Jade Fox in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", you should see what she was like 30 years ago as a heroine! And as a bonus, she even gets to beat up Jackie Chan (who plays a Japanese villain). Whether you like this movie or not will depend on whether you like female kung-fu heroines.