Only one review here so I'll add one more. This is fairly standard wuxia stuff from the Shaws, but I'm generally a fan of their approach so that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a standard revenge theme with a couple of interesting twists, but these rely on ridiculous coincidences and are so clumsily handled, there are no real surprises. The fight choreography and wirework is unambitious routine stuff throughout.
The only unusual thing here is the female avenger lead played by Cheng Pei Pei, who isn't on absolute top form in terms of either acting or fighting, at least compared with her stunning cameo in Crouching Tiger. However she did make me laugh with her deliciously sarcastic responses to the male lead's naïve dumbness. The rest of the acting is OK but this guy is very annoying. While he has a point that exterminating everyone named Yan maybe isn't the most efficient approach to gaining revenge against one particular unknown Yan, he's so sanctimonious and officious the whole time. A bit more attention needed to his own tragically botched revenge, and a lot less time spent obstructing Cheng's attempts to deal with the bad guys. Her crush on this idiot is incomprehensible.
On a positive note, this is reasonably entertaining throughout and the female hero gets to achieve her goals without too much interference (unlike Come Drink With Me, for example) but she needs rescuing a few too many times. As the movie begins, she's already killed 18 of the 20 Yan brothers (big families they had back then!) without a problem so how come the last two are suddenly so difficult? The main bad guy wasn't built up enough as a swordsman prior to the final showdown and I was disappointed that her practice of displaying the severed heads of her victims on any handy building got forgotten about as soon as the movie got going.
