It is a performances centric movie

Instant Favorite.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

(Partial credit to IMDb) Jackie witnesses the death of his father, at the hands of a merciless killer, who just happens to be a martial arts master. Jackie vows to never speak again until he avenges the death of his Father, and become a Shaolin Monk. He encounters many kooky characters along the way, and befriends them. They all teach him different aspects of Kung-Fu (Drunken, killing, slippery snake, and more) I wouldn't exactly call this movie great entertainment, but it does manage to entertain for the most part. Right from the outset of the movie we are treated to rather lengthy fight sequences. The plot is nothing special. It's the typical "train me Fung-Fu" type of thing at this juncture, with plenty of slapstick involving the token drunk, among other things. The Wooden Men thing is more than just a gimmick. It acts as an insurmountable obstacle, no matter how great your Kung-Fu is. I won't spoil it, but the one involving Jackie Chan & The Wooden Men is absolutely exhilarating! I would consider it to be a fight sequence, essentially, and it's one of the greatest fight scenes I've ever witnessed in all my years of watching martial art films. Jackie's ability to move out of the way of these things countless times, time and time again is incredible. It's one of the coolest athletic feats i've ever seen. Jackie Chan has barely any dialog, as a matter of fact… He doesn't speak until the very end of the film (!) He is a mute for most of the duration, to sell the death of his Father. It's kinda hard to grade his performance because of it, but Jackie's presence can't be denied. He could peel a potato for an hour, and I'd probably be interested in all likelihood. The big fight at the end is also very enthralling. I wouldn't call this one of Jackie's best films, but its entertainment value is unequivocally high. If you manage to find it, and you're a big Jackie Chan fan, I definitely recommend seeing this movie. It's a thoroughly enjoyable, cheapie. 6.9/10

A Jackie Chan movie is like pizza, even when it's bad it's still pretty good. First the good, it's a standard revenge plot. There's nothing wrong with seeing that for the millionth time. We're here for the martial arts not the story and the martial art does deliver. Even the hokey part fighting the wooden men (which easily could have failed) was done surprisingly well. The movie never dragged and the funny parts were reasonably funny. There was the expected build up to the big fight at the end and the fight finale could have been better but again, that pizza analogy. It could have been better if the antagonist delivered more speed and power in his moves, something which he seemed quite capable of doing. The bad part was making Jackie a mute until the last fight. Whoever's idea that was (did I hear someone mumble Lo Wei?) totally blew it. Really, not that I love to hear his voice or anything and it would have been dubbed by some British guy anyway, but the hero has to say a few syllables. I really think that keeping Jackie silent made the difference between this movie being a miss instead of a hit on it's initial movie theater run. Think of how history would have changed if Jackie came to stardom in 1976 instead of a few years later! The world would be a different place and we all might have our flying cars if Jackie had only spoken up sooner.

This is a very interesting Jackie Chan film. It has the usual revenge cliché's but already you can see several elements that would become common place in his later movies.Two scenes stand out in this movie: the opening scene with the fighting monks and the final fight scene where 'Dummy' confronts the killer of his father. The scenes with the Buddhist non are for some reason quite touching. This film is a must for die-hard Jackie Chan fans but if you are an occasional Jackie Chan viewer you might be put-off because this early movie is much darker in tone than his later movies (e.g. Project A) and thus has none of the humor that characterizes his later movies so much.

Under-rated film featuring a mute Jacky Chan who begins training at a Shaolin monastery. This films best draw-card is it's plot. This is your regular Kung Fu vengeance story but written much more cunningly and cleverly. The typical plot mechanisms are used, but they didn't bother me, and the story held my attention better than most modern movies I see.Jackie's fighting is great, and I particularly enjoyed the training he receives from the Nun(?). Not to mention the inventive and really quite absurd training he gets from the imprisoned man.As like other films of this period, I think that only Kung Fu genre die-hards will really sit through this and feel rewarded. The Wooden Men themselves never seemed as dangerous as the real men in the film - is this some kind of comment on human nature in a Kung Fu film?