Excellent but underrated film

Beautiful, moving film.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Review of Part One: KUNG FU KILLER is a TV movie that seeks to win viewers by re-teaming two stars of Tarantino's KILL BILL films, David Carradine and Daryl Hannah. The result is a mostly unsuccessful little feature that lacks excitement or intrigue, happy instead to follow well-worn plot routes instead of carving out new territory.The biggest flaw with this film is the pacing. The film's frankly boring, a little action here and there not doing anything to change that. The film is book-ended by a couple of half-decent, large scale battles – owing much to the graphic climax of Stallone's RAMBO in terms of editing and choreography – but throughout the middle section, little occurs. David Carradine is playing pretty much the same character as he did in his television series KUNG FU, but he's a lot older here. Watching a guy in his 70s fight is not exactly something I enjoy doing, but Carradine acquits himself well and shows he's still got it. Sure, he's doubled on occasion, but I found his fight scenes more convincing than those in a recent Steven Seagal movie, for instance. The supporting cast don't make much of an impact, and Daryl Hannah, doing her own singing in the role of a, well, singer, is frankly terrible.KUNG FU KILLER's biggest strength is that it was actually filmed in China, so a lot of the scenery and locations are authentic. Sadly, these do little to distract from the ho-hum storyline. This was originally conceived of as a two-part miniseries, and a sequel, KUNG FU KILLER 2, follows the same characters in a new story. To add insult to injury, the version I saw was the heavily-edited children's version, which omits ALL of the graphic violence and bloodshed. This is another good reason for me not to like it.Review of Part Two: KUNG FU KILLER 2 is the second part of a miniseries that was broken down into two separate feature films for television release. The first in the series was a middling period martial arts would-be epic that had plenty of wasted potential; much the same can be said of the sequel. As the story kicked in I realised I was enjoying this a lot more than the first movie. There's a stronger storyline, even if it does follow the basic 'journey' template meted out by countless kung fu flicks of old, but it has incident, character, and extremely attractive surroundings. Added to that, the fight choreography seems slightly better and less choppy, too.Sadly, things fall apart in a big way at around the halfway mark, so much so that the film grinds to a halt and only lifts slightly for a lacklustre climax. There are heroes, villains, and some characters mid-way between the two, but by this time we can't really care about what's going on as the director has long before lost us. All of the first film's lead actors reprise their roles to middling effect, and of the new cast members, only Anya makes an impression as a layered villainess; she's great in the part.There isn't much of note here. Carradine hangs around and is surprisingly decent in the acting stakes, but he does little. Daryl Hannah is a complete waste of space, again. There are one or two genuinely decent fights, one or two bizarre interludes (such as the bits where the party fall foul of some killer courtesans and angry lepers), some lesbian undertones, and a muddled, gloomy ending. It's not absolutely awful, and the money's up on screen, but as with the first film, this could have been so much more.

Kung Fu Killer stars David Carradine as another 'Caine' type character from his beloved Kung Fu series.The television movie is actually co-written by David Seidler who would go on to win an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his next film, The King's Speech.Carradine plays a Caucasian monk called Crane in Shanghai who infiltrates the criminal underworld to find the killers of his spiritual female Grandmaster and thus gain his vengeance.Carradine was rather long in the tooth for some of the martial arts scenes but he acquits himself well. He joins up in this film with his Kill Bill accomplice, Daryl Hannah who plays a nightclub singer and romantic interest. Hannah is rather wasted in the glamour role especially given how vicious and striking she was in Kill Bill.Carradine has enough charisma to keep us the audience interested, after all we end up reminiscing about his Kung Fu series from our boyhood. The television film has a few good set pieces, the plot is rather hokey and the film is rather pedestrian even dull in places.

"White Crane" (Kung Fu Killer) is to me classic David Carradine doing his legendary "Kung Fu" only he's older. If any of you remember his TV shows "Kung Fu" in the 70's and "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" of the 90's in which Carradine fights in a majestic and powerful way and shares with you his words of wisdom then you should love this, if you have been brought up on the films of Jackie Chan and Jet Li where they jump around like they are on something hitting their opponents a dozen times without defeating them but some how winning in the end then you may not appreciate this style of Kung Fu movie. Daryl Hannah does a good job as a 1930s singer and looks the part and Osric Chau is excellent as a young Kung Fu student.

HEALTH WARNING!! This film is so bad it will leave searing white hot pains behind the eye ball's and may result in gut wrenching spasms. Fans of the original series will be seriously disappointed. If you are expecting really cool kung fu fighting and killing then don't watch it. Its amazing that any producer would actually waste time and money on this made for TV film. I was expecting this show to bring the first and second series to a nice circular conclusion but i guessed wrong. The script was so poor that the dodgy acting made it look good. The story jumps about with no real logic or reason but it does save it self a little by including a couple of romance resolutions.