Come Drink With Me

Come Drink With Me (1966)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059079/]

The Gist:
This is one of the first projects by King Hu that starts the tonal style shift of old school marital arts wuxia films. Instead of the more outlandish over the top style we begin to see a subtlety more reminiscent of Japanese samurai films and a dance like quality to the fight scenes, gaining a rhythm and a stop-go-stop flow. These choices are responsible for a host of badass film incarnations following King Hu's "Come Drink With Me", films that surpass the original in many ways. However, watching this film and its horrible subtitles and its somewhat cheesy action, you still get the feeling of a beautiful set of motion taking place. The film works well on its own, even in context to those that would follow. It also gets points for a plot that isn't completely ridiculous (as we saw in Chocolate and as we'll see again in Shaolin Temple), a story that is simple, well written, and with endearing protagonists. Drunken Cat, in particular, is a badass characterization for a kung fu master (playing on the by now cliche character persona, where he appears to be a fuck up but is really a zen badass). Anyway, this was a great film, but the years and the poor translation were not kind to it.