If this film had been released in America in the year of its production, 1966, or the year afterward, I guarantee that the rave for Hong Kong action films would have surfaced then, and not 1972 (and on) with "5 fingers of death" and "fist of fury". And it would not just have happened among young men (the principle audience for the 'fu film in the '70s),but among Hollywood veterans as well, which would have begun a trend to introduce Hong Kong methods - and professionals - into Hollywood itself.

because this film is dam' well made. The film looks as though King Hu spent hours watching and analyzing George Steven's accomplishment in "Shane", and then figuring out how to do Stevens 'one better' so to speak, and yet maintain his film's appeal to his base audience in Hong Kong and other Chinese communities.

So what we have here is part 'adult western', part 'chinese opera' and all adventure movie from start to finish.

And this is not for kids - and I'm not referring to the violence. The subtle humor of the dialog, the maturity of the acting, the wisdom of the ethical problems raised and of their resolutions, these are for adults to enjoy, and then later to ponder. When the hero stabs a villain, and the villain's blood gushes over the hero's face, this is a brutal reminder of just how serious a violent choice - i.e., the choice to engage in violence, however noble the cause - really is. - A question the film takes seriously, as any good film would.

Very well made, cleverly written, with strong performances from all. A real gem.

King Hu's "Da zui xia" ("Come Drink with Me" in English) is the sort of movie to which "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Kill Bill" paid homage. The plot involves a kidnapping with the hope of a prisoner exchange, but do you really watch these movies to focus on that? It's all about the martial arts. And boy are you about to see some here!

Unlike Bruce Lee's movies, the emphasis here is sword-fighting. To be certain, the sister (Cheng Pei-pei) of the captured man is the one who takes charge. She's got some moves like you can't imagine. It all amounts to one cool piece of work. Having seen this, I definitely want to see more movies from the Shaw brothers.

My score of 8 does not mean that the original COME DRINK WITH ME (DA ZUI XIA) deserves this score. This score is for the Genius Products DVD version. While on one hand I am very, very glad the film was not poorly dubbed into English but actually features a subtitled version, the titles are very, very bad. Oddly, the subbing appeared to get worse as the film progressed! I knew something was amiss when they kept referring to a female as 'he' and 'sir' but later in the film the subtitles often made even less sense--like the translation from Chinese to subtitles was being done by a poor computer program not a human being who truly understood the languages. Now this DVD is not all bad--at least the copy is as pristine as you can find--with a clean and crisp print. Thank goodness for something positive to say about the copy.

As for the technical merits of the film, the martial arts action is not the best I've seen, but it is very, very good--and quite a bit better than the typical film of the genre. Most of the blows appear to actually connect and the sword action is very good as well. The people making the film actually knew kung fu and they are impressive to watch. This is NOT a film where blows obviously miss and there are lots of squashing celery and the typical slapping sounds for special effects.

The story is pretty interesting and takes you by surprise here and there. The leader of a band of thieves is caught by the government and will be executed. However, the gang captures the son of the governor and plans on killing him unless they get their leader back in five days. In response, the government sends in a special agent who turns out to be the son's sister. She is extremely skilled and is planning on taking on the gang--not returning their evil leader.

While this plot seems pretty straight-forward, there's much more to it. In the midst of all this wanders a beggar who is definitely much more than he appears to be. When the lady is injured, he steps forward to help and he turns out to be a much more potent fighter than anyone realized. While he does help her achieve justice, he also has another task at hand--to exact justice for the murder of his master.

Overall, this is definitely one of the better films of the genre and is well worth seeing. However, if you can find a non-dubbed and non-Genius DVD (if that's possible),you may find the film is a bit better than an 8. I sure hope this is possible, as the film deserves a much better translation into English.