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Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

99 CYCLING SWORDS is your standard kung fu entry from Taiwan. The hunt is on for some political rebels so four masters of the martial arts are brought in to have them got rid of. The main focus of the plot is on female fighter Polly Shang Kwan, who spends most of the running time in a rather unworkable disguise as a bloke.What follows is your usual adventure, with some back stabbing, some betrayals, and a whip-wielding villain. Lo Lieh shows up in support but doesn't have much to do, as was so often the case in his career. The fights are plentiful but routinely staged and the director seems more interested in basic special effects than fluid fight choreography. In addition, the usual shortcomings of the genre - poor dubbing, grainy film quality - make this something of a chore to sit through.

I read Brian Camp's excellent review and warning but since I am a kung fu completist I was obligated to watch this poor excuse for a movie. I tried to watch it a few years back but the copy was so poor it hurt to look at. The DVD version was much better – only on the eyes. The movie takes reverse printing, or running the film backwards, to the point of beaten to death. I have never liked that special effect. It almost always looks jarringly fake. I can see where it is appropriate, like jumping up, but it should never be so overdone. Overdone is a good word to describe everything about this movie. Even the typical cut where the fighter does a forward roll in mid-air was overdone to four forward rolls per cut. Woo Gam could have been overdone and that I would have enjoyed but she was nowhere as slutty as she could have been. That being said, there was a fight at about the 37 minute mark that was good and was not over done. Overall, below average, and now that I have done my duty and watched it once I doubt I'll watch it again.

99 CYCLING SWORDS is a bottom-of-the-barrel entry in the 1970s kung fu genre with the normally adept Polly Shang Kwan (DRAGON INN, LADY WUTANG) trapped in a confusing mess of a plot and silly fight scenes. The plot has something to do with the search for a traitor among the Four Dragons team of kung fu experts and the search for an elusive fellow named Chu Er Ming who seeks to restore the Ching Dynasty. Three disparate characters ally with the Four Dragons to try and find the elusive rebel, who conveniently always shows up when and where the heroes want him to, even though he has no reason to. Polly's character is dressed as a man for most of the film and is accepted as such, even though her chest is noticeable enough for the others to at least ask questions. And when she falls for another hero she tells him that she has a `sister' for him. So she dresses up as a female (the first time in the film she does so) and comes to meet the other guy in a scene that is actually one of the cuter ones in the film.The fight scenes tend to be too gimmicky, with lots of high leaping and back-and-front flips and use of props. The bad guy wields a mean whip. There's a lot of reverse printing, e.g. the bad guy catching tea cups in a perfect column as they are thrown at him by the heroes. These scenes can actually be fun to watch, if you're not looking for great kung fu, but you have to sit through some horrible dialogue scenes to get to them. The English dubbing is just about the worst this reviewer has ever encountered. Most of the dialogue seems to have been made up simply to fit the lip movements rather than advance the story. Whenever music is called for, the loud and bombastic theme music is simply repeated. This one is only for kung fu completists and fans of Polly Shang Kwan.