If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Crappy film

Absolutely Fantastic

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This goofy and rather endearing kung fu flick is a strange and unconventional viewing experience which alternates between predictably and originality. Whilst no classic it provides ample viewing pleasure and plenty of action to propel it along nicely, making it a solid addition to the genre. Plus there are two CLASSIC fight scenes to be enjoyed but more on those later. The plot feels inspired by a western in its story of a new police chief (or sheriff), played by genre regular Bruce Li, a man who spent his life impersonating Bruce Lee and made a name for himself with his films at least in quantity if not quality. Li arrives at a small-town prison and invites selected prisoners to join him on an epic quest: if they survive, they'll be free men. Otherwise they can spend their lives bored out of their brains in a no-life prison. Unsurprisingly all of the men agree to join in the quest.Basically the quest consists of finding the whereabouts of a bandit gang who have been tearing up the countryside and laying waste to their ranks. The film then becomes one long series of fight scenes to the end, with little or no plot exposition in between, which I can appreciate. Li and his buddies go around to all kinds of different locations and beat up the bad guys there. They even fight some religious guys. I guess everyone is a bandit in this film. What I like about THE DEADLY STRIKE are the slight touches of characterisation given to the prisoners; the main ones each have their own back story which influences their actions in the film. One guy killed three men who raped and murdered his wife and is actually pretty decent under his hard exterior, another man used to whip and abuse his wife and now gets to whip the bad guys, another is an expert knife thrower and so on. Each man brings his own skill to the group. As the film progresses you'll wonder why this set-up was bothered with at all, considering that 90% of the fight scenes consist of Bruce Li kicking the bad guys on his own anyway without any help.Things build up to longer, fiercer and harder fights with the good guys getting bumped off one by one and numbers dwindling. In an unintentionally hilarious scene, Li has a would-be escapee hanged in front of his former cell-mates, a moment which should be shocking and moving but which the bad dubbing makes funny. Eventually they battle the main bad guy, who gets his strength by snorting from a snuff box in his belt (one man amusingly ends up swallowing this box, although I couldn't explain how!). The fight choreography is pretty average for Hong Kong standards, which means that its still above most Western kung-fu movies, but there are some decent moments and Li is a good fighter. Watch out for the deaths, which consist of every single actor drooling blood as he slumps to the ground. The film has cheap production values and a theme which tries to rip-off Morricone but I've seen worse.There are two bizarre fights in this film worthy of a Wang Yu movie. The first is when Li and his men come upon two leopard-skin wearing fighters in a canyon. The strange thing? These guys fight with one standing on the other's shoulders. The ensuing battle is definitely as strange as it sounds and a lot of fun, propelled by amusing camera tricks and weird facial expressions. The second, classic scene has Li and his party taking on a gang of monks who worship at a snake temple. Thus, they fight with their own unique style of snake-fighting, which consists of them acting like snakes by attacking with strikes that hiss, painting their arms green, and sliding across the floor (very cheaply done, and hilarious with it) to menace the enemy. A great moment. THE DEADLY STRIKE is not a classic, but very entertaining at times and with a lot of spirit if not skill.

Bruce Li stars as a new police captain who gathers together a bunch of hardcore prisoners to help him take down a mobster who killed the last captain and is running the town with a deadly iron fist. Actually i'm not sure if Li is avenging the old captain because due to dubbing the main bad guy says "He's like all police captains, and we'll handle him the same way." which given the way people randomly attack Bruce Li, would indicate he killed the last one. I'm not 100% sure though. Speaking of which Deadly Strike doesn't actually have Bruce Le in it, especially the way that it was promoted. It's Bruce Li and I would assume Bruce Li was probably the most high profile of the Bruce Lee clones, so why the cover promises Bruce Le is anyone's guess. Still this movie features enough chop socky action to make this typical old school outing go down a lot easier. Once again Bruce Li has not a patch on the real Bruce Lee but he has his own screen presence and his martial arts moves are fairly fun to watch at times. What really hurts the movie (At least on a technical level) are the production values which are pretty bad. Once again though, it all comes down to whether or not this is your type of thing and being that anyone who sees the movie Deadly Strike promoted on video, knows whether you can gather enjoyment from such a title or not and as a bad movie junkie I found this to be fairly enjoyable as these things go.* * out of 4-(Fair)

Okay, I'll admit I've seen this movie about more than a dozen times since I was growing up. Especially during the 80's with all that Martial Arts/Ninja movie craze people had fun with. And this is what movie making was all about, imagination, fun and excitement. While this movie isn't up to the standard b.s. of today's action films, Deadly Strike is a gulity pleasure when it comes to cheesy movies of decade's past. The plot is so simple you wouldn't need a map to figure this one out. The main protagonist is a newly appointed sheriff (in full macho form) enlists a bunch of ragtag convicts (a thief, a one-eyed knife specialist, a father and a revenge driven woman to new a few) to seek out and eliminate a gang of ruthless bandits who have been terrorzing a small town in the middle of nowhere. Each villian is given their chance to shine. There's about two or three of them which sequnces will leave you in awe. (Sorry I can't give it away, it would ruin the fun) The action sequences are much to be desired, but excecuted with comic book flair and such cheesiness that it will definetly leave you laughing all night long after you've seen this movie. The cinematography is aweful and the dialog is excruciatingly funny in it's dubbing. Overall, it's a gulity pleasure for someone who's really bored.

This is an unintentionally funny martial arts flick, with Bruce Li as the incoming sheriff recruiting some of the town's vicious criminals and offering them a chance to spend most of their lives in prison or risk them fighting a band of thieves and being rewarded with their freedom after the job is done. The choreography is certainly not the best, though Bruce Li has some nice moments. Some of the scenes have to be seen to be believed (IE. the snake temple, the two thugs by the mountains.) Check out the main villain and don't tell me he doesn't look like Orson Welles' Charles Foster Kane (I think this may have been an official follow up to CITIZEN KANE, showing us Kane's times in Hong Kong when he was looking for enlightment.) Anyway, the dubbing job here, by Hong Kong voice actors, is so awful that is funny and can make a miserable rainy day fun. This movie is worth a look.