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Excellent, a Must See

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Being a Kung Fu practitioner and cameraman I naturally watch a lot of old Kung Fu flicks. But until recently I've never even heard of "The 18 Bronzemen". I stumbled across it due to a reference in the game "Sleeping Dogs" and found the title and imagery very intriguing so I figured I'd give it a try. Unfortunately I could only get my hands on the cropped 4:3 release which really ruins the composition of every shot and makes the fight scenes nearly incomprehensible. Nevertheless the first half was just what I imagined and highly entertaining. Which is why I kept on watching despite the horrible cropping. Those bronze warriors are an amazing Idea and also pretty well executed. Combined with the mostly gray scenery this produces a very unique and aesthetic visual appeal. Sure, the costumes could've been more detailed but still, it works. The fights against Bronzemen are like the final exam for our protagonist and are intercut with training sequences. I was always looking forward for the next scene with the Bronzemen. I mean, this is basically the title of the whole movie so there have to be more scenes with them, right? Right?!After what felt like 10mins. with the Bronzemen the protagonist leaves the temple behind and the whole ordeal is never mentioned again. What we get now is a standard revenge plot and sub par choreographies. This drags on for the rest of the film....Why would you do that? Why would you throw away such a great idea that worked so well? They obviously knew the value of what they had - they named the movie after it!Personally I would recut it. Focus on the training in the temple and the quest of beating the Bronzemen. And after the Protagonist and his friend have mastered this challenge the abbot sends them on their way to serve their country and the people. They wander off down the mountain while the credits roll. MUCH better movie just like that. Instead we get this....

18 Bronze Men is a film of two halves. The first half is, to put it simply, spectacular. The second half is, to be frank, agonisingly dull. If the film had continued in the vein of the first half it would have been a top film. If the first half had been like the second half it would have been appalling. As it is, the two halves cancel each other out to make 18 Bronze Men a pretty much middling movie, worth watching for fans of the concept but not something to really go out of your way to see. Basically the plot involves an orphaned child who is sent to some kind of weird martial arts monastery. The only way people can leave this place is to become so highly skilled in the martial arts that they can pass a series of deadly tests before they can pass through the door. Said tests take up the entire first half of the movie.As the title would suggest, during these tests the boy (now a young man played by Tien Pens, accompanied by pal Carter Wong) must battle with a series of colourful and crazy Bronze Men. Some of the men are just naked guys covered in gold paint, others go the whole hog and have really bizarre, almost robotic-like looking gold plated armour complete with faces that make them look like Buddha. As well as these tough dudes, the passages and chambers of the temple in which the action takes place are full of spikes that fly out of statues, heavy doors that must be lifted, flaming "dragon" pots and more booby traps than Indiana Jones could ever hope to handle. The kung-fu action as the two heroes attempt to pass the Bronze Men makes for a truly unique viewing experience (at least until the sequels and rip-offs followed) which is a lot of fun.Unfortunately, as soon as these guys do manage to escape, the film goes downhill. It turns into a run-of-the-mill revenge drama with a serious lack of decent action, at least until the breathtaking three-on-one fight in an old quarry at the end which comes as too little, too late. A woman appears who disguises herself as a man by hiding her long hair, thus deceiving all and sundry although her voice is still high-pitched and her face is unmistakably female! Those gullible Chinese folk, I don't know. Meanwhile the subtitles on the version I saw were often misspelt or simply wrong, which is kind of amusing but not really.Tien Pens isn't to fault as the hero, creating a quite likable persona and proving himself in the action stakes without being really spectacular like some of his counterparts. Meanwhile the shaven-headed Carter Wong is probably the hardest-looking and toughest guy in the film, although sadly his is but a supporting role. The bad guys (sometimes dressed as ninjas) are a clichéd bunch and not very interesting either. 18 BRONZE MEN proved to be quite a disappointment in my mind, as aside from the fighting with the Bronze Men (for which it gets that extra star alone) it doesn't really offer much apart from a very old, tired plot and some routine action. However, the film proved to be so popular that a sequel was hastily cobbled together and released in the same year!

While not perfect I find this to be a highly entertaining film with excellent performances by the four main characters. Some complained of bad acting(Uh yeah and Jackie Chan can act?),bad dubs(watch the subbed version) and poor effects. I suspect there is a rather bad dubbed version out there. The subbed version I watched I got a while back and watching it for the second time my only critique is the Shaolin set (model lol)and the ending was little kooky(Doubles of the Villain everywhere ha.) it still delivered however at the very end. The story of three friends in Shaolin all sent there by their fathers for different reasons is one of the best I can remember in any Martial Arts flick.a young Carter Wong is fantastic as the serious Big brother.All I can say is I wish more Martial Arts movies were as well made as this one.

Walking through my local DVD shop I wasn't intending to buy anything and definitely not something I had never heard of before but I saw this for real cheap so I picked it up. I just wanted something different to watch and review for my website. I don't regret purchasing and watching this film. Besides my mate that watched it with me I can safely say that out of everybody I know I am the only person who has seen this movie. So onto reviewing The 18 Bronzemen: Part 1.The story in itself is quite confusing and most of it does not get explained until towards the end but I'll try my best. So there is a government known as the Ching government and they decide to kill anybody that supports this guy called Ming. A baby (later called Shao Lung) is rescued and brought to the Ming friendly Shaolin Temple where he is brought up in the art of kung fu to exact revenge upon his family. At the same time another child is taken to the Temple and the two grow extremely close. After many hardships they two enter the "line of 18 bronzemen" which is the final task to graduate from the Temple. Here they fight men literally made from bronze. If they fail they die. After failing the first time and helping each other to escape they try again and succeed. Shao Lung then decides to track down the evil tyrannical ruler to avenge his family.The movie was directed by Joseph Kuo and starred Peng Tien as Shao Lung and Carter Wong as Brother Wan (the kid that was sent at the same time as Shao Lung). The movie even has a decent twist which took me by surprise. A complete laughable part however is when a woman is apparently disguised as a man and everybody thinks she is (but it is clearly obvious it is a woman).So despite its flaws, most likely because of being something that is completely different to me, I found this to be an enjoyable movie. This is a hard movie to recommend as it would have a fine niche market but hey, if you find yourself bored, why not? I look forward to watching part two.originally posted on my blog www.comikkazee.com