This excellent revenge-themed Shaw Brothers epic is the kind of film they did so well. My favourite Chinese director, Chang Cheh, is on hand to choreograph the mayhem in this brutal tale of bloodshed and murder, set in 1920s Peking. In many ways this is a familiar film; we saw almost exactly the same type of antics in the later BOXER FROM SHANTUNG, but that doesn't stop this being thrilling.

The film is headlined by two leading action stars of the day, David Chiang and Ti Lung. Lung has a small role here, playing a guy who falls foul of some gangster types and finds himself murdered in a particularly vicious fashion. His brother is Chiang, who isn't about to let things rest. As usual, our hero finds himself working his way through the enemy, starting off with lowly henchmen before facing the inner circle of tough crime bosses and a sniper thrown into the mix too.

There isn't a slow moment in this movie, which really focuses on the lean, mean storyline. The cast are excellent: the bad guys slimy, the good guys stoic and stony-faced. Chiang has never been more stylish and stone-faced than he is here. The various chase and action sequences are all expertly staged, with a highlight being some fighting amid the high balconies above a theatre performance. Inevitably the movie is book-ended by a couple of huge one-vs-many fights, with the outcome pretty much inevitable in both; still, these are without a doubt the finest moments of the film and I'll never get tired of watching this sort of mayhem. A real classic, this.

VENGEANCE!, one of director Chang Cheh's earliest gangster movies, features two of his protégés, Ti Lung and David Chiang, as a pair of brothers who both happen to be Chinese opera stars. Ti Lung performs in a troupe headed by the unscrupulous Ku Feng, who lusts after Lung's wife. While SHE doesn't seem to mind the attention, Lung DOES and lets his Boss know it. This turns out to be a fatal mistake: Feng makes nefarious plans with the other members of his gang and Lung's character is murdered (in a particularly brutal way, too: his eyes are gouged out before he's finished off). Enter his brother, played by David Chiang. He has only one thing on his mind: VENGEANCE! And he gets it, too, decimating the Bad Guys in bloodthirsty fashion. He finds time between killings to fall for a young lady, but nothing can stand in the way of his VENGEANCE! Superbly directed (as usual),VENGEANCE! is worth a look for Chang Cheh, Ti Lung or David Chiang fans- or fans of gangster cinema.

Vengeance (1970) is a hardcore action film starring David Chiang and Lung Ti. Lung appears in the first act of the film. He's a Peking Opera performer who's sick and tired of all of the corruption going on in town. He confronts the local crime boss but get's nowhere. The boss goes out and has his goon murder Lung. Days later, his crazy brother (David Chiang) comes into town. All he wants to do is find out who killed his brother. Whenever he's unsatisfied with the answers the locals give him or if they question him back, he just breaks limbs or kills them on the spot. Feed up with the non-compliance with the gangsters, David decides to crush them with his superb fighting skills.

Pimped out in a white suit, David storms the bosses hide out and slaughters his way until he meets the boss. Being a boss for so long, he shows David why and delivers some blood letting punishment. After giving him all he could handle, the boss gloats over David's propped up body. This gives ample time for David to give the dumb boss a first hand demonstration of his "quart of blood" technique. With his last bit of energy, David dies in dramatic fashion in front of a local girl who was falling him. Now his brother can rest....and so can he!!

An awesome action film that was heavily copied in John Woo's THE KILLER. Man, he sure loved to copy a lot of great scenes from the Shaw Brothers movies he worked on. If you loved blood soaked action with loads of dead bodies and bone crunching action, then you don't want to miss Vengeance! Make sure you watch the restored Celestial Pictures version. Not only is it in the original language but it's in beautiful Shawscope!

Highly recommended.