Once, the King of Martial Arts wrote a manual of all skills but, in order to prevent it being held by one person he split the manual into two parts – one holding all the even numbered pages and the other holding the odd pages. Currently half the manual is held by the Winged Tiger Deng Fei (a villainous expert in a technique which is almost like flying) and the other is in the possession of Master Yin (better known to his friends as the King of Hades). In order to obtain both copies for himself, Yin has arranged for his sister Yin Cai Fa to marry Deng Fei in return for his half of the manual. Unwilling to let one man hold all the power and keen to share the manual with the world, the Chief of Mount Hua and the heads of the martial arts schools send Flying Hero Guo Jiou Ru to obtain both copies. The plan is simple, kill the Winged Tiger to get his copy and then Guo Jiou Ru will use his power of mimicry and similar fighting style to impersonate Deng Fei and infiltrate the Yin home in order to get the other half. Sounds impossible and indeed even a blind man (You Ming) can tell something is off when Guo Jiou Ru turns up claiming to be the Winged Tiger – but can he pull it off?
A couple of things confused me early in this film and it took me a second to recover from it. Firstly the nature of the setup left me unclear if Guo Jiou Ru was the hero or not – particularly since he was not the title character. Of course I got this sorted once they referred to him as the Flying Hero (clue is in the name y'see). The second thing was that they chose him to do this mission because he is an expert in ventriloquism – so I immediately thought that somehow he would be throwing his voice as part of combat, which didn't make sense. However the better translation is to say he is the best at "impersonation" and indeed this makes sense in regard to the plot once it is laid out. From here the plot moves forward nicely although I didn't think Deng Fei was painted badly enough for me to be happy with his targeting. This moves to the Yin house hold and here we have some nice drama as Guo goes undercover, tricking those that suspect him, evading those that would do him harm and romancing Cai Fa as the real Winged Tiger would do. It is a little messy and could have done with some tighter moments but it is a nice narrative and in the end has some twists and turns which I enjoyed as the action kicked in for the boss fights.
The action is mostly good but not all to my personal taste. As the name of the style suggests (winged/flying), there is a lot of wire work here and personally I am not always a fan of this when it is overdone. I did think the bunny-hop and mid-air moves were a bit silly but when it is mostly grounded it works a lot better and there are some very good sequences – particularly in the final third of the film where they not only look good but really engage as they have impact and weight to them. The cast are mixed. Chan Hung-Lieh is a bit bland as a hero, although he did well enough to hold the attention. The villains are better with Wei Ping-ao in particular good form as blind You Ming. Tien Feng is solid as Yin. The romance aspect is well carried by the delicate beauty of Annette Sam but more importantly by a very good turn from Angela Yu Chien who is won over, hurt, betrayed, enraged and a lot of other emotions all of which she sells. Ironically for the title character, Cheng Lui is not that good but is not really in it much.
Overall, The Winged Tiger is an enjoyable film. The plot is not as tight as it could have been but does still have tension, drama and twists. The romance side works well (thanks mostly to Yu Chien) and the action is tough and well choreographed (even if I personally didn't care for how much wire work there was). Not perfect in all areas but as a whole it is well worth seeking out.
