Despite having a clichéd and overly simplistic plot (four brothers avenge the deaths of their three other brothers) which I believe has been the basis for literally hundreds of Hong Kong kung fu flicks, MARCO POLO is a lot of fun, an action-packed and epic tale which is literally breathtaking in places. I'm still a relative newcomer to the whole martial arts genre but if the majority of the films waiting to be seen out there are like this then I'll be a happy man. Although it runs for approximately one hour and forty-five minutes, MARCO POLO is never boring, instead alternating between frantic scenes of action and lots of unintentionally hilarious plot development.
The film begins somewhat bizarrely with the arrival of Marco Polo, who is played by no less than peplum legend and all-round action hero Richard Harrison. Harrison immediately befriends the Mongol leader and becomes one of his officers. The bizarre thing is that Marco Polo doesn't actually have anything to do with this movie. He doesn't actually do anything either, apart from passing on some wisdom at one stage. For the majority of the film, although he's on the side of the bad guys, he remains an ambivalent character before revealing his true colours as a force of good at the end of the movie. Now, this double-sided role could have made quite a good character study of a man torn between two sides, but the film doesn't work like that. What's more likely is that Polo's character was simply shoehorned into the plot to a) introduce a Western character to appeal to Western audiences, and b) convince people that the film was some kind of historical epic, which it isn't. Whatever the reason, Polo's out-of-place position in the movie is one of the strangest and puzzling things I've seen in a long time.
The Mongol leader needs to pick three new men to lead his guard, so devises a ceremony in which various talented fighters battle each other to find out who the most victorious are (of course, the battle tournament stuff would later be ripped off by Van Damme and all sorts of no-budget straight-to-video action producers in the '90s). After a lengthy display of martial arts combat, the palace is attacked by a pair of assassins out to kill the leader. One of them is bloodily killed outright (run through with a sword) while the other, played by genre mainstay Carter Wong, manages to leap to safety. The reason? Well, he's a pugilist, apparently.
Well, the guard (led by Harrison and including Gordon Liu and the beloved Beardy) quickly chase the escapee and manage to kill him (he was a novice, you see). They also butcher his brother and kidnap his wife. Along their journey they meet four peasants who are in reality the brothers of the dead assassins. The men journey together for some time before revealing their true identities and escaping into the night, or rather into a small village where they take up training in the art of pugilism. Cue some very lengthy training sequences in which a quartet of grumpy old men (one of whom spits constantly) torture and beat up their pupils in a bid to make them stronger. Each practises a different skill; one man must jump in an out of a cess pit (!), another must move boulders across a hill, another has to chop down a bamboo forest and another needs to fry grain and smooth a turn stone. Their work is made more difficult as no weapons or tools are allowed in the village, so they have to do all the work using only their hands and bodies.
After lots of this training (which does become a bit repetitive, but luckily it's pretty funny to watch so doesn't become boring), the Mongol hordes (consisting of about a hundred soldiers) storm the village, and must face the fight of the four men only. Cue lots of large-scale martial arts battles, as our heroes firstly face down the trio of killer guards in bloody one-on-one combat, and then battle the full force of the army single-handedly. Backs are broken, property is destroyed, buildings collapse, and people are axed in the most gratuitously violent way imaginable; it's great stuff! Things get really over-the-top at the end which is extremely exciting and well worth waiting for, with tons of guards getting brutally killed and bodies falling everywhere. Two characters punch so hard that skin is left behind and hand prints appear on bodies! It's the "iron palm" trick apparently.
My jaw was dropping when two of the leading characters get repeatedly impaled and shot through the stomach with arrows, yet still manage to fight on with determination as the blood courses down their bodies and their lives ebb away. Now THAT's willpower! The film is pretty violent of course, with lots of blood spurting from mouths and bones getting broken all in the best possible taste, and this just adds to the over-the-top look and feel. Along with all this, the acting isn't bad either, with the four leads including Alexander Fu Sheng making their characters unique and likable. Richard Harrison is always good value too, although he doesn't really have much to do here other than to stand around and look dashing in his moustache. The spectacularly violent action and hell-raising stunts and impossible actions more than make up for any minor deficiencies, so MARCO POLO gets my thumbs up as a thoroughly entertaining slice of kung fu madness.
The film begins somewhat bizarrely with the arrival of Marco Polo, who is played by no less than peplum legend and all-round action hero Richard Harrison. Harrison immediately befriends the Mongol leader and becomes one of his officers. The bizarre thing is that Marco Polo doesn't actually have anything to do with this movie. He doesn't actually do anything either, apart from passing on some wisdom at one stage. For the majority of the film, although he's on the side of the bad guys, he remains an ambivalent character before revealing his true colours as a force of good at the end of the movie. Now, this double-sided role could have made quite a good character study of a man torn between two sides, but the film doesn't work like that. What's more likely is that Polo's character was simply shoehorned into the plot to a) introduce a Western character to appeal to Western audiences, and b) convince people that the film was some kind of historical epic, which it isn't. Whatever the reason, Polo's out-of-place position in the movie is one of the strangest and puzzling things I've seen in a long time.
The Mongol leader needs to pick three new men to lead his guard, so devises a ceremony in which various talented fighters battle each other to find out who the most victorious are (of course, the battle tournament stuff would later be ripped off by Van Damme and all sorts of no-budget straight-to-video action producers in the '90s). After a lengthy display of martial arts combat, the palace is attacked by a pair of assassins out to kill the leader. One of them is bloodily killed outright (run through with a sword) while the other, played by genre mainstay Carter Wong, manages to leap to safety. The reason? Well, he's a pugilist, apparently.
Well, the guard (led by Harrison and including Gordon Liu and the beloved Beardy) quickly chase the escapee and manage to kill him (he was a novice, you see). They also butcher his brother and kidnap his wife. Along their journey they meet four peasants who are in reality the brothers of the dead assassins. The men journey together for some time before revealing their true identities and escaping into the night, or rather into a small village where they take up training in the art of pugilism. Cue some very lengthy training sequences in which a quartet of grumpy old men (one of whom spits constantly) torture and beat up their pupils in a bid to make them stronger. Each practises a different skill; one man must jump in an out of a cess pit (!), another must move boulders across a hill, another has to chop down a bamboo forest and another needs to fry grain and smooth a turn stone. Their work is made more difficult as no weapons or tools are allowed in the village, so they have to do all the work using only their hands and bodies.
After lots of this training (which does become a bit repetitive, but luckily it's pretty funny to watch so doesn't become boring), the Mongol hordes (consisting of about a hundred soldiers) storm the village, and must face the fight of the four men only. Cue lots of large-scale martial arts battles, as our heroes firstly face down the trio of killer guards in bloody one-on-one combat, and then battle the full force of the army single-handedly. Backs are broken, property is destroyed, buildings collapse, and people are axed in the most gratuitously violent way imaginable; it's great stuff! Things get really over-the-top at the end which is extremely exciting and well worth waiting for, with tons of guards getting brutally killed and bodies falling everywhere. Two characters punch so hard that skin is left behind and hand prints appear on bodies! It's the "iron palm" trick apparently.
My jaw was dropping when two of the leading characters get repeatedly impaled and shot through the stomach with arrows, yet still manage to fight on with determination as the blood courses down their bodies and their lives ebb away. Now THAT's willpower! The film is pretty violent of course, with lots of blood spurting from mouths and bones getting broken all in the best possible taste, and this just adds to the over-the-top look and feel. Along with all this, the acting isn't bad either, with the four leads including Alexander Fu Sheng making their characters unique and likable. Richard Harrison is always good value too, although he doesn't really have much to do here other than to stand around and look dashing in his moustache. The spectacularly violent action and hell-raising stunts and impossible actions more than make up for any minor deficiencies, so MARCO POLO gets my thumbs up as a thoroughly entertaining slice of kung fu madness.