The Heroic Ones (1970)

[GoldenPigsy]

I really like Delightful Forest. Ti Lung also played Wu Song in The Water Margin, All Men Are Brothers, and Tiger Killer (which is an excellent film directed by Li Han Hsiang, not Chang Cheh). He's a very good fit for the role.

Also, I think The Assassin is one of Chang Cheh's best. It's a Jimmy Wang Yu vehicle about the founding of the Qin dynasty.

[Sandpalm79]

I really like Delightful Forest. Ti Lung also played Wu Song in The Water Margin, All Men Are Brothers, and Tiger Killer (which is an excellent film directed by Li Han Hsiang, not Chang Cheh). He's a very good fit for the role.

Also, I think The Assassin is one of Chang Cheh's best. It's a Jimmy Wang Yu vehicle about the founding of the Qin dynasty.

thanks man! so this wu song is the character he played in heroic ones?

[GoldenPigsy]

Nope. Wu Song is the character he plays in Delightful Forest, The Water Margin, etc.

Those films are adapted from an old Chinese novel about 108 outlaws in the Sung dynasty. Ti Lung plays the same character in them, and he fits it pretty well.

[Iron Boat]

Ti Lung fights to a heroic death and dies standing, DC is suppose to be the smart one, as portrayed throughout the film, but he lays there and gets shredded? Guess Cheh wanted a twist ending.

[Morgoth Bauglir]

I really like Delightful Forest. Ti Lung also played Wu Song in The Water Margin, All Men Are Brothers, and Tiger Killer (which is an excellent film directed by Li Han Hsiang, not Chang Cheh). He's a very good fit for the role.

Also, I think The Assassin is one of Chang Cheh's best. It's a Jimmy Wang Yu vehicle about the founding of the Qin dynasty.

I recently watched Delightful Forest. Probably my favorite performance I've seen from Ti Lung.

[Tosh]

For the Iron Triangle films, my favortes are -

The Duel (of Iron FIsts)

Duel of Fists (Ti Lung as a Muay Thai fighter!)

New One Armed Swordsman

Blood Brothers

I still need to see the Angry Guest, the sequel to Duel of Fists:squigglemouth:

[Sandpalm79]

how many iron triangles are there in celestial quality with english dub>?

all i know of is

deadly duo

heroic ones

heroes two

??

i really enjoy them more with the english dub. you can look at the actors face and emotion instead of reading.. which is my number one reason! also sometimes the translations are strange.. i like preist pai mei much better than the sub of white brows haha

[Cesare]

I watched the first half the first night and was very impressed. I did enjoy the end but the tent scene just didnt make sense to me.. how did david chiang lose all of his wit and seem to almost become laughably stupid. whereas in the first half he displayed the opposite. i wonder if the english dub made it seem worse, but that was the only odd part of the movie for me.. i thought the horse scene was amazing though

The scene makes perfect sense to me.

I think I've already explained why somewhere around here in the SB subsection - and I'm too lazy right now to write it all again but let's just say 13th son doesn't have all the info the audience has, has some good reasons to believe that his father might be coming up with funny ideas, and he's a good, filial son. And above all - c'mon...this is

a) Tang China.

Wuxia.

c) Chang Cheh film.

That sort of entails certain patterns of thought and conduct...

I personally have more trouble suspending disbelief when David Chiang's character suddenly (even though just temporarily) loses all of his wit and sound judgement at a certain point in Wandering Swordsman.

In any case, Shi san tai bao is definitely one of my favorite iron triangle films and absolutely my favorite early 1970s epic by CC (beats Water Margin by five lengths)...

[KyFi]

In any case, Shi san tai bao is definitely one of my favorite iron triangle films and absolutely my favorite early 1970s epic by CC (beats Water Margin by five lengths)...

I love all the early 70s CC movies, and really enjoy The Heroic Ones.

There's just something about Water Margin, though, that I can't quite put my finger on. There's too many characters, the plot is confusing, it's too long, the fight scenes aren't that great, and there's a lot of weird early 70s rock music throughout that doesn't quite fit----but when it's all put together, I LOVE that movie!

[Cesare]

I prefer All Men Are Brothers to Water Margin. The second epic about Liang Shan heroes is somehow - more CC in almost all respects. Water Margin just seems to be trying to head in 5 different directions at the same time (and we've seen in Heroic Ones what this sort of thing did to DC...;-)) and while I quite love the film, it's not my absolute fave.

I guess I'd be able to appreciate it better if I read the book (which I actually plan to do as soon as I get my hands on it).

Though when it comes to the Water Margin series, Delightful Forest is probably my fave. I like how wuxia/swordplay elements combine with the "basher" vibes in that one. It's a good display of CC's strengths as a director, I believe...

[Blood Sword]

There are several reasons why I do not dig water margin but main one is none of heroes die:tinysmile_angry2_t:

[HyperDrive]

There are several reasons why I do not dig water margin but main one is none of heroes die:tinysmile_angry2_t:

They don't die in that part of the novel. I see what you mean though since it featured the Iron Triangle.

[Cesare]

Yeah, it was pretty much the same for example with Duel of Fists, though in Water Margin it felt (to a person unacquainted with the novel) even more as a kind of marked absence, given that Water Margin is exactly that sort of thing that - with CC - generally tends to end in a bloodbath...:-)

A bit like that X-mas episode of South Park where Kenny doesn't get killed...

[KyFi]

Water Margin just seems to be trying to head in 5 different directions at the same time (and we've seen in Heroic Ones what this sort of thing did to DC...;-)) ...

[The Dragon]

I recently watched Delightful Forest. Probably my favorite performance I've seen from Ti Lung.

+ 1! That, and his role in The Blood Brothers.

Best performances by Ti Lung from that era.

... Athough, he wasn't bad in The Pirate.

[Iron_Leopard]

The Heroic Ones is BEAST!

What an awesome f*****g movie!

No wonder this was the highest grossing movie at the time. This was more epic than "Gone With the Wind".

Has to be in GuiNess Book of world records for highest body count in a single motion picture.

Not really sure why they were heroic cause they were bad guys but whatever.

 

[De Ming Li]

In terms of scale, it was certainly top of the line for it's time.

[Iron_Leopard]

I don't remember asking anyone to edit the title of this thread. 

So why the hell was it changed?

[Killer Meteor]

Is Iron Leopard the new Golden Dragon Yin-Yang?

[Iron_Leopard]

18 hours ago, Killer Meteor said:

Is Iron Leopard the new Golden Dragon Yin-Yang?

Don't know what that means lol. 

But no comment on the movie? Can't believe I'm the first person to make a thread on this classic.

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

You've been around since '08, you know EVERY old school Kung Fu movie has been discussed and every old school Kung Fu topic has been exhausted.

With that said, yes... The Heroic Ones is an epic flick.

[Iron_Leopard]

8 hours ago, TibetanWhiteCrane said:

You've been around since '08, you know EVERY old school Kung Fu movie has been discussed and every old school Kung Fu topic has been exhausted.

With that said, yes... The Heroic Ones is an epic flick.

I guess that's another reason why the forum is so dead. Nothing new to add to conversations since it's all already been said.

 

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

Bingo...

[Killer Meteor]

The opening cast list for this film is quite interesting, as it lists the characters in order of their familial rank, ala a Shakespeare play, rather than the status of the actor or the relevance of the character to the plot. Hence Chi Han is top-billed, Ti Lung somewhere in the middle, and David Chiang at the end.

[DrNgor]

The Heroic Ones (Hong Kong, 1970)
aka: The 13 Masters; Shaolin Masters; 13 Sons of Yellow Dragon

Chinese Title: 十三太保
Translation: Thirteen Court Advisors

Starring: David Chiang, Ti Lung, Ku Feng, Chen Sing, Chin Han, Pao Chia-Wen, Lo Wai, James Nam Gung-Fan, Lau Gong, Sung Tuan, Huang Pei-Chih, Wang Kuang-Yu, Chan Chuen, Lau Kar-Wing, Wong Chung, Lily Li, Bolo Yeung
Director: Chang Cheh
Action Directors: Tong Gaai, Lau Kar-Leung, Lau Kar-Wing

As the film opens, a voiceover informs that the Tang Dynasty[1] (618 - 907 AD) has weakened and is enduring a lot of internal strife. So much so, that a bandit army has formed and taken over the capital, Chang’an. The emperor has enlisted the help of the trusted warlord, Li Keyong (who’ll be played by Shaw Brothers regular Ku Feng in the film), and his 13 sons to take the capital back and defeat the rebels.

The story proper begins circa 883 AD, with Li Keyong and his sons partying and drinking themselves silly in the presence of other officials, including the weasly Zhu Wen (perennial movie villain Chen Sing, in a role usually reserved for Wei Ping-Ao). A rebel general (Bolo Yeung) shows up at the city gates, challenging the generals to personal combat. A drunken Li Cunxiao (David Chiang), Keyong’s 13th general and former shepherd, takes up the challenge and defeats the brute. This incurs both the jealousy and the ire of Zhu Wen, who retreats to his palace in Bianliang.

The 13 Generals then sneak into Chang’an with the mission to assassinate the rebel king and disperse the enemy army. Things are going well until the 4th and 12th generals get green with envy when they see Li Cunxiao about to complete the mission. They start attacking the guards early and the confusion both prevents them Cunxiao from killing his target and gets everybody trapped in the city. Only the timely intervention of a young woman (played by Lily Li) playing the role of Rahab saves the men from capture and execution.

All of this accounts for the first half of a two-hour film, one of the longer kung fu epics of the 1970s. The second half is practically a different film, in which the ambitious Zhu Wen—who in real life would end up toppling the Tang Dynasty himself and starting the infamous “Five Dynasties, Ten Kingdoms” period—tries to get Li Keyong and his sons out of the way, as their loyalty to the Tang emperor threatens his plans to take over China. Connecting the two halves is the subplot involving the jealous 4th and 12th Brothers, which Zhu exploits and ultimately leads to the downfall of the Li family.

When I first watched the film, I dismissed it (at least from an action standpoint) as being nothing that one couldn’t find good examples of in your average Italian peplum film made the previous decade. That may still be true, although to be honest, I need to go back and watch the larger-scacled, battle-oriented films like The Giant of Marathon and check. Watching it a second time, especially after watching several wuxia films from the previous decade, made me appreciate it a lot more. And much like John Woo’s two-part epic Red Cliff, the battles focus on the exploits of nigh super-powered generals taking on legions of soldiers, as opposed to dozens of foot soldiers caught up in the chaos.

In King Hu’s landmark films, action director Hang Ying-Chieh was definitely going for “Japanese samurai choreography filtered through the lens of a Peking Opera master.” In the arthouse film A City Called Dragon (1969), it took three choreographers to get the Japanese chambara style of swordplay just right. In this film, Chang Cheh’s action direction team—Tong Gaai and Lau Kar-Leung—keep things fast and simple. An exchange of a hero blocking two or three attackers, and then swinging his weapon and killing one (although sometimes up to five!) opponent. And since the action involves whole armies, it guarantees that there’s little time for strategy and circling: the action scenes are bloody free-for-alls.

As one would expect from a movie revolving around clashing militaries, fights are weapons based, with sabers and spears getting most of the attention, especially the latter, which are David Chiang’s and Ti Lung’s weapons of choice. During the huge and exciting flight from Bianliang castle, Zhu Wen sends a couple of squads of special soldiers—one group is armed with horse-chopping blades, while another uses rope-darts—to kill our heroes. Said escape from Bianliang is the pièce de résistance of the film, as it goes on for almost 20 minutes and has Ti Lung (playing the 11th general, Li Jingsi) killing dozens and dozens of soldiers as he puts his life on the line to get his father out of a burning palace and to safety. In fact, that scene is so exciting that the clímax, where the remaining generals have to root the treachery out of their own family, ends up suffering. At this point, neither Tong Gaai nor Lau Kar-Leung had evolved enough as fight choreographers to give the nine-on-two weapons duel the energy and complexity it needed to stand alongside the sheer scale of the previous set piece. Thus, what should be the emotional and physical peak of the movie is ultimately an anticlímax.

A final observation: I noticed that the military garb worn by the characters is identical to what I’ve seen in films set in both the Song and Ming Dynasties, which came later on. I wonder if Chinese army dress hadn’t changed over the course of several hundred years, or if the costume designers weren’t aware of that, or if simply there was no budget to create authentic attire for Tang Dynasty soldiers, and thus cobbled together whatever was left over from the last Shaw Production set in the Ming Dynasty.

 

---

[1] - There are actually not very many movies set during this particular dynasty. The most notable recent examples are The Assassin (2015) and House of Flying Daggers (2004).