The movie opens with a demonstration culminating in martial artists being bullet proof. Everything in the demonstration is phony. Wong Yu enters as a martial artist who makes a living doing phony things associated with martial arts. The crowd wants to believe what he does is real and it puts food on the table. Is there a right or wrong here? This is probably the first time such a complex moral dilemma was ever put in a martial arts movie.

Wong Yu continues to create his own problems through the movie by embracing the phony and using it to get out of each situation but that only leads to the next situation. His master passed out drunk in the first scene but he returns in the final scene. Wong Yu cannot escape from his phony machinations but his master saves the day by yelling out to him the names of real kung fu styles that he has practiced. Wong Yu then overcomes the bad guys by discarding the phony and using real kung fu fighting.

The action is lacking in the whole first half of the movie. At about the 80 minute mark the grandmaster of all martial arts movies, Liu Chia-Liang, steps in front of the camera for a terrific fight sequence. Despite the lack of action in the first half, the movie has other interesting features. Liu Chia-Liang presents a preview of things to come. He uses hard core practical effects that the Yuen clan will use in their early 1980s movies. There is also the occult link to martial arts that will be done by Sammo Hung and Lam Ching-Ying in his vampire movies at about the same time. Both of these details will peak a bit later with such movies as the Chinese ghost stories and the bride with white hair movies.

This is Wong Yu's first lead and much more can be said about him. For now I will only add that his story is the rags to riches and back to rags story.

I rate this movie above average and consider it mandatory for fans of the genre.

I thought that was excellent for the Shaw films I have seen so far.

This film is excellent because it looks great. The cinematography was really nice for one of these films, framed with thought. The zooming in this film was not bad and there weren't any reaction capturing close up zooms that these films are littered with.

One specific moment that I found questionable was using light for a useless little scare on the audience. Making a character lit bright green. It worked in that characters opening shot, but some later shots specifically looked not real and extra light hit the clothing they were wearing rather than just the face, which works something special.

There was a nice story here. A conman's travels and eventual settling in a certain village he has fooled for a long time. He was a good hearted defend the poor and treat the bourgeoisie like arse, but he puts his own self before the poor.

The main actor Yue Wong is great. A real special character and performance. His kung fu was excellent, I love that animal style stuff specifically when Jackie Chan in 'Around the World in 80 Days,' one of my childhood films, does the demonstration of the different styles, so I was very impressed and surprised when this was a part of the plot. The kung fu all round, in fact, is incredible, it was probably the better of the chopsocky Shaw films I have seen so far. 'The Brave Archer' had some excellent kung fu but it was not raw, it was supernatural stuff which has a different spellbounding affect on the audience.

The action comedy preceding 'Drunken Master' demonstrates action scenes with comedic moments and then brutality which is exactly what Jackie Chan did with his movies, and it is done competitively so here.

The opening scene has the opening titles freeze framing a demonstration to the audience of some true spiritual boxing which is just so magnificent. It sets a wonderful scene for a great kung fu movie and a well done story, foreshadowing and pay off. Well done.

Brian Camp, as usual, reviews this film very well but it is more fun than he makes it sound. Wang (Wong) Yu is very likable and the storyline is strong and interesting. I found the final fight against the robbers more convincing than he did, with Wang's original master urging him on to use the correct counter style from the side lines. He is actually saved in the end by the police and unusually he doesn't fight the main villains including the versatile Fung Hak On (who doesn't really get to show his fighting skills). I also want to mention the humour which apart from the usual unbelievable not recognising the beautiful girl as man joke, is quite good and well handled - particularly in the funny exorcism scene. I really enjoyed this film and though it's not a classic, as Lau Kar Leung's directorial debut it showed real promise.