The Heroes is a lower budget (but not low quality) kung fu epic taking place in The Qing Dynasty. Ti Lung is the lead here and plays a Qing officer that betrayed his brothers In a raid of a Shaolin temple. What his brothers don't know is that he actually is working against the emperor, by keeping them imprisoned and putting them through rigorous training to keep up with their martial arts skills for when the time comes. Ti Lung is an excellent actor and is great at playing this honorable ( but anguished) character. This was directed by Wu Ma, who also acts in this film along with Danny Lee who would also star in a film with John Woo(The Killer). The sets look good and the fights are incredible. The Heroes is certainly a good watch and is very much the same style as Shaw Brothers studio classics, with lots of those actors working on this.

WU TANG CLAN is best known today for inspiring an American music group of the same name, although it's a worthwhile martial arts outing in itself. It feels very much like a Shaw Brothers outing, albeit one made in Taiwan with a much more limited budget than the Shaws were capable of mustering. Thus we get a story that is set in a single location for the most part, with colourful but inauthentic-looking costumes.

As with so many of these films, the movie opens with the burning of the Shaolin Temple and various fighters swearing vengeance. Ti Lung plays against type as one of the bad guys who proceeds to round up the Shaolin survivors and 'tortures' them by having them train in the martial arts! Yes, this is another training movie, enlivened by various bouts, bloody deaths, and a lively fight climax ending.

WU TANG CLAN will win no awards for originality or fight choreography, because the fights all seem quite slow and mannered. But it's a watchable film nonetheless, thanks in part to Ti Lung who commands the screen throughout. The familiar faces of Shih Szu, Dorian Tan, and Danny Lee play in support, while the direction was handled by famous character actor Wu Ma, who also appears in support. I always found that Michael Chan Wai-Man was more convincing as an impassive villain (as he plays here) than he was playing the hero in the likes of THE HANDCUFF.

In an interesting role reversal, Ti Lung plays Cao, a treacherous Shaolin disciple whose temple is razed when he betrays it to The Emperor. He then oversees the ongoing torture of the survivors, although it quickly becomes apparent that something's not quite right: the prisoners are being too well fed and are actually becoming stronger under Cao's torture. Among the prisoners is Dorian Tan, but he doesn't get to display his spectacular kicks for very long: he's killed halfway through the movie in what was, for me, as shocking a scene as Janet Leigh's shower in PSYCHO. THE HEROES has some decent if all too brief fight scenes, and it's beautifully directed for what looks to have been a low budget affair. I'm not surprised to see that THE HEROES was directed by Ma Wu, who also did the fantastic comedy THE DEAD AND THE DEADLY.