User Reviews

Choy Lee Yut is a famous Chinese martial arts but I have not heard of it. Therefore, hearing that this movie is based on Choy Lee Yut, I had to give it a shot. Though the martial arts is famous, the movie is not so. I think this is a direct-to-DVD type of movie, I have not heard it showing in cinemas. Since this is a low-budget movie, do not expect excellent visuals and big fight set pieces in cool places and known movies stars like the IP man movies. Some of only noticeable stars are Sammo Hung and Dennis To although they do not appear often.

The story: It is nothing new to the martial arts genre and even the fighting scenes are just okay for a martial arts movie. There is even sappy romance between the main characters. For God's sake. The first third of the 1 hour and 32 minutes movie is okay focusing on the school and the contract of the fight competition for the school but the second third turns into a sappy puppy love story where the main characters are somehow attracted to each other. Martial arts fans will have to wait till the last third to see some real fighting in the competition. But the waiting for the competition is not well paid-off. The moves/choreography brings nothing new to the genre plus all of the horrifying slow-motion shots. And the song played during the last fight scene. What was the music composer thinking? The CGI in a few scenes is like from a cheap video game.

Overall: It is nothing new. It is just another generic low-budget martial arts movie trying to please martial arts fans. Watch this if you have the time to spare. If not, you will not be missing a lot of things.

Choy Li Fut is an actual martial arts style that exist. I never heard of it before. But reading about it on the internet was infinitely more interesting than this poor production. What were they thinking? And how did they manage to get Sammo Hung and Yuen Wah on board? They are martial arts legends. That in itself is more compelling.Now I wasn't expecting a good film.Average with top notch action would have sufficed just as good. And with regret I have to inform that isn't the case. What puzzles me even more is that with this movie they had the chance to inform the viewer about this form of martial arts and really sell it.But fail to do so.No real attempt is made. We simply are shown what you see in most similar movies.A few tedious training sequences, soap opera antics that absolutely nobody is waiting for.And fights so boring that I could not wait for them to be over.There was one redeeming factor. A short dream like sequence where Sammo Hung and Yeun Wah fight each other. Much too short but far better than all the other fights in Choy Lee Fut. To use a quote from this movie:"Don't look too long or you will get nightmares" So true!

I have, essentially, seen this movie many times before. CHOYLEEFUT is a decently-made but ultimately uninventive modern martial arts drama that recycles any number of plot devices and storyline clichés in uninteresting fashion, making for a movie that you can't really complain about but can't laud either. Its cast is interesting enough but both the screenplay and the fight scenes are just waiting to be overlooked and forgotten in the history of kung fu cinema.

The story: A young kung fu practitioner (Sammy Hung) bets the school of his father (also his real-life dad Sammo) against a corporate fighting team in martial competition to prove the strength of his family's kung fu.

While the title of the film is apt for the fact that choy lee fut is the exploited fighting style of the story, the renaming doesn't detract from the film since it's treated very superficially: the opening and closing titles provide some background and history of the art, but the movie offers next to no insight of its philosophy or even points out how it differs from other styles (though it does feel confident enough to more or less state that it's better than karate). The film builds up to a series of three matches to determine the school's fate, along the way diving into a boring love triangle tangent, and during this time, most of the characters develop little personality, to the point that I didn't even care who won or lost in the end.

Along with Sammo Hung, fellow Hong Kong cinema icon Yuen Wah is present, though their roles are largely non-fighting and play to their senior status; it was probably an easy shoot for them. Mostly it's a Gen-X cast at the forefront, featuring Kane Kosugi and Dennis To, and like I said before, none of them really have much of a personality in the film. This carries over to the fight scenes: wrangled by Sam Wong, they peak at times with nice moves, athleticism, and minimal wire-fu (particularly during the fight between Kosugi and gweilo Ian Powers) but nonetheless end up all looking the same thanks to flawed rhythm, too much cutting, and an icky habit of slow-motioning reaction shots.

There are a few interesting moments in the film, like when it adopts psychedelic CGI backgrounds for some flashback scenes and the training montage alluding to ROCKY IV. Personally, I like seeing Kane Kosugi perform in general, so his costarring role here was really appreciated. Regardless, the movie really doesn't try for much, with the result that I'll probably forget about it in a fortnight. I can't really justify giving it a lower rating since it's very smoothly produced for its budget, but I can't recommend this to anybody short of die-hard fans of anyone involved.

Honestly i can't believe the reviews before me... This movie ain't bad at all, its a very nice martial art movie. Sure its not Ip Man but c'mon...

Of course if you get this for Sammo Hung only, sure you will be disappointed he is not much into it... I originally got it cause his name and face is on the cover, but even tough i was surprise to see he was not that much in it, i tough it was very fun and nice. Sure the romance may be a bit sloppy as some pointed, but if you base your view of the movie on just that, you miss something.

Once i realize Ken Kosugi was in, i knew it would be fun, the guy showed some stuff before, and overall i was very entertain by the fighting sequence and overall story.

I watched the movie in Cantonese, as i can't stand English dub, i am from Quebec, so speak french, i watch movies in french dubbed normally, and i grew up doing so, so they look perfectly normal to me, but an English dub just feel off to me... an original English version is all fine, but if the movie is in Cantonese, i rather watch it in Cantonese. I would not be surprise to see some people had trouble getting into the movie because they watched it in English.

Anyway, i got this by surprise in a video club bin for 5$ and i was surprise to see how good it is, definitely liked it. Actually its been a while i didn't enjoyed a good martial art movie that much...