Long hu zheng ba

The Bruce Lee imitators were old news by the time this film was made, which meant that director Lin Kuo-hsiang could focus on actually making a movie and not just an assemblage of motifs in which the fighting is almost incidental. Bruce Le is simply 'David', a taciturn figure who struts through the era of Sun Yat-sen in a polyester disco suit (with a talking parrot on his shoulder, believe it or not, and an ultimately treacherous girlfriend named Fanny). Initially, he and Wang Piao (Bill Louie, who co-starred with Jackie Chan's real-life sifu, Yu Chan-yuan, in "The Old Master") are at odds with one another, but finally they team up to foil a plot to steal funds from the Chinese Nationalists. When I say that "Bruce vs. Bill" is workmanlike, I mean that the script and direction are tolerable, and that the fights are adequately choreographed. There's absolutely nothing exceptional about the action in this film, but that's strangely comforting for lifelong fans of chop-socky. You expect stolid heroes, big, mean-looking villains and numerous battles to the death, and that's what you get here. (Best fight: Bill Louie against the snarling, paunchy bald guy at the end of the movie. It gets downright brutal when they scuffle their way into what looks like a primitive water treatment facility.) Average by most standards, but above par for a Bruceploitation flick. Five and a half stars.