The book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is where I found out that this Taiwanese (Mandarin language) film even existed, obviously I wasn't going to miss the chance to see it and hopefully agree with the recommendation. Basically well-meaning, often clumsy and unambitious scholar and painter Ku Shen Chai (Chun Shih) lives with his mother in her house nearly a supposedly haunted abandoned fortress, and one day deciding to explore this fortress he finds it occupied. Yang Hui-Ching (Feng Hsu) is a female fugitive hiding out from a stranger in town wanting to take her to back to the East Chamber guards for execution, and he wants to help her with her plan to bring out the real villain in a plot. A corrupt Eunuch Wei is trying to get rid of Yang and the rest of her family, and through the process of helping and sleeping with her Ku is no longer bumbling and becomes stronger in will, but it may not necessarily come from himself, it may supernatural forces. A big battle ensues between the painter turned warrior and the East Chamber guards, and Yang goes missing, but Ku tracks her down to a monastery, where powerful saint Abbot Hui Yuan (Roy Chiao) is there, and she has given birth to Ku's child and become a nun. The evil Chief Commander Hsu Hsien-Chen (Han Ying-Chieh) tracks down the monastery and leads the army of Eunuch Wei into another battle, but the villain ends up defeated and killed, and in the end Yang was badly injured, and supposedly she dies as the sun rises and makes it look like she has a halo. Also starring Hsue Han as Dr. Lu Meng, Ying-Chieh Han as Hsu, Shui Wang as Mun Ta and Sammo Hung Kam-Bo as Commander Hsu's son, and apparently young Jackie Chan appears somewhere doing background extra and stunt work. As soon as I saw some of the chase and fight sequences I could tell that this was the inspiration for the eye-catching choreography and artistry of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, I will be honest and say that I got a little confused and lost in the story going on, and the three hour length is a little annoying, but for all the exciting bits it is a worthwhile martial arts action drama. Good!

This is a special kind of movie, since it's being so many different things all at once. It's a type of movie that feels more like an old fashioned Japanese samurai movie, even though this movie is being a Taiwanese production.

What I especially like about it is that it starts off as something totally different but eventually ends as am adventurous movie, with lots of material arts fights in it. It's a long movie (about 3 hours) so it takes its time to slowly set things up and let stuff develop into something different. This ensures that the movie is always slowly but gradually developing and also never stands still, so there is never being an actual slow moment in this movie.

As the story develops, things also definitely get more interesting and fun to watch. The movie turns into a real adventure, in which the main characters are almost constantly traveling and having encounters with people that want to take their lives. This ensures that there is also plenty of action to enjoy in this movie, involving sword fights but also plenty of hand-to-hand combat, with every now and then Wire Fu effects involved.

It's also being a real innovative and original movie at times with some of its editing and camera techniques. In that regard this is also being a real '70's flick, a period in which a lot of experimenting with editing and cinematography was going on. Especially the cinematography is great at times and also does a good job at capturing the right mood and brining the environments very lively to the screen.

It's just the sort of movie not an awful lot is being wrong with. It does everything well and within its genre it's being a great watch!

9/10

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I didn't think I could be so bored by a martial arts film. How disappointing; I was looking forward to finally seeing a film by the legendary director King Hu, but this may turn me off any other films of his. The story is a dull one about a fugitive girl, an expert in martial arts taught by some powerful monks, who moves into a small town hoping to escape her death sentence. Her father had spoken out against a local tyrant, and his whole family was sentenced to death. An artist neighbor of the girl falls for her, and gets mixed up in the dangers she faces. The martial arts sequences are few and far between in this 3 hours + film, and the ones that are there are mostly poor. The editing is so choppy that it's often impossible to tell what's going on. Worse yet, a good number of these sequences are at night, so you can't see anything. Only the two climactic battles (the film is split in two) are any good at all, and they are kind of similar, at that. The only commendable aspect of the film is its gorgeous color cinematography. It is truly exceptional, but nothing else about A Touch of Zen is.

Think me a rube or what have you, but nothing but pseudo-profundity and a lack of technical knowledge.