With the passing of time, the Wang Wu School will get noticed by the Emperor who will propose Wang Wu to join forces with him and a samurai master from Japan to train his royal guards. All this is of course a cover up, the real intention of the emperor is that he would prefer to have Wang Wu on his side since he has heard that someone is attempting to reform the Chinese government and liberate the oppressed. But Wang Wu refuses the proposition, which will make his school appear as a treat in the eye of the Emperor. Wang Wu will then decide to fight back the Emperor, helped by his closes students but also by Nine Catties a student of Tan Szu.

Review: This movie is a good example that you don't necessary need Jet Li in a Kung Fu spectacular to make a decent film. Directed by no one else than the veteran Hong Kong actor and director Sammo Hung , Blade of Fury is an epic swordplay movie dealing about old Chinese politics and corrupted government. Very entertaining all along with some incredible kung fu - swordplay fighting mixed with decent dramatic scenes, all these classic elements make Blade of Fury a well done kung fu movie. Unfortunately the final result may suffer a little too much from a plot trying to be too complex for what it could have been.

I don't know that much about Chinese history so I cant tell if everything in the movie is historically true but the story is very serious and realistic in a way that it is not hard to believe that some elements of the movie could have really happened. The story deals a lot about government and political situations. This gives a very serious atmosphere to the story but it also tones down the action part too much, because the wait between each fighting and action sequence was a little too long in my opinion or maybe the not so good dialogues made these moment look even longer. The story has a lot of turns and twists and most of them are really good and unexpected, you hardly know who the evil guys really are before near the end. But I'm not a big fan of political stories in general so that concept didn't really work with me but I'm sure that some of you will like that type of historical setting.

Even if Sammo Hung is credited in the movie, he only appears a brief moment as an imperial guard, so don't expect to see a movie with Sammo Hung. The main character is Brother Wu, played by Sing Ngai who can also be seen in a couple of Jet Li movies. Brother Wu appeared to be a lot like one of those legendary characters, he could almost be compared to Wong Fei Hung or Fong Say Yuk in some way. His tragic story was very interesting to follow and the acting of Sing Ngai really fitted the character very well. As for his martial arts skills, it was impressive enough on screen to make his character appear as a believable kick ass kung fu master.

Tan Szu Tung who was also an important character was played by no one else than Ti Lung, who also appeared in the two classic John Woo movie A Better Tomorrow. This character was more about politics than kung fu, in a way that he talked more than he fought but still he was very well portrayed. The close student of Tan Szu Tung was played by Cynthia Khan, that character was probably a man because other character in the movie were most of the time referring to her as a man but her name really sounded feminine. Her martial art skills were decent and the stunts double were easy to spot but this small factor didn't affect at all her appreciation.

The fighting sequences were far from what you usually have in an old school kung fu movie. Forget traditional fighting here because the fights were similar to what you usually have in a Jet Li movies. Wushu type fighting style with decent use of wires, all this enhanced by a cranked up speed. The choreographies were good and the amount of fighting was enough to please a martial arts movie fan but I found that there were two small problems about it. First, that damn cranked speed was way too fast, which I found was completely unnecessary and made the fight look a little silly. And second, near the end of the movie, there's a very long moment were there's no fight at all, which will probably bother the viewer. This is the part where the story concludes and all the boring dialogues mostly appear. But don't worry the fights get back after that with a good 15 min of non stop fighting to conclude the movie, which I found very impressive for a finale.