Watch The 7 Grandmasters For Free

How sad is this?

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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

7 GRANDMASTERS is a Taiwanese cheap shot by prolific director Joseph Kuo. It's one of those films which is basically all fighting as a young and upstanding young bloke is awarded the title of kung fu world champion but remains unsure of his merits, to which end he goes on an odyssey of battling as he fights no less than seven of the world's top kung fu grand masters.There's little more plot to it than that, but this film works because the action is of a good quality. It was choreographed by the great Corey Yuen, who of course would go on to make many classics during the 1980s, and thus the fights have a stylish, hard-hitting feel to them that you don't get elsewhere. Yi-Min Li is an acceptable lead and you get popular actors like Jack Long, Mark Long, and Nancy Yen in support. The usual problems of this genre exist in the film's presentation - poor dubbing, fullscreen picture quality - but 7 GRANDMASTERS works well regardless of these issues.

7 Grandmasters deserves to be a legend of martial arts cinema. Nowhere else, either from this period of cinema or the modern era, have I seen so much variety in fighting styles and such a huge number of quality fight sequences. While the fights may adhere to a '70s fight choreography feel to some extent, they're very fast and fluid, with each fight displaying a unique tone. Monkey style, mantis style, weapon fights, fights between the same styles, an unorthodox fight that will be at home to Jackie Chan fans, and several others. Each style is carefully considered and utilized authentically, not just as a gimmick to add superficial differences to samey choreography. And fortunately the fights are filmed at steady, wide angles with long continuous shots whenever possible to allow the viewer to fully appreciate the action.The story may seem unusually briskly paced, but this ends up being refreshing after experiencing countless martial arts films with convoluted melodrama, where good martial artists try and fail to act. What story there is explains the motivation for each of the fights without ever holding back the real goal of the movie.Visually, the film is quite gorgeous, with varied locations and bright, vast environments. The sound effects on the original mandarin audio track utilize wonderful whooshing effects for the fights, as you'd expect.This is a must-see classic for any fan of martial arts film.

This really defines a blueprint for this kind of movie: 1) Guy with ridiculous facial hair and/or silly hat wonders through the wilderness,happens upon another guy practicing Kung Fu 2) Brief conversation involving a) a particular technique of one of the silly-haired-guys, b) the number of provinces in which the other silly-haired guy is undefeated 3) Fight, preferably involving some kind of animal-style Kung Fu. 4) Repeat as many times as you can squeeze into a couple of hours.Throw in a grueling training sequence (though this maybe isn't quite grueling enough in this movie), a bit of betrayal (ideally involving someone killing someone else's master), some slapstick comedy, some bad dubbing (this genre is really the only one where dubbing should be allowed) and there you have it - the perfect Kung Fu movie. I defy anyone not to enjoy it.

This movie is so excellent. It has the best kung fu action, and the fights are good and long. The story is actually okay, and the dialogue, while dubbed, is still good. The actors do not speak the typical stupid kung fu movies lines. Watch this.