Synopsis
Legendary Weapons of China (十八般武藝, 1982) is a Hong Kong martial arts film from Shaw Brothers you can watch online on iFILM. Late Qing dynasty: Empress Dowager Cixi sends agents into the factions of the Boxer Uprising to find fighters claimed to be impervious to foreign bullets. When one sect leader, Ti Tan, disbands his group — having concluded that no amount of spiritual discipline stops a rifle — assassins from the remaining factions are dispatched to silence him.
Director and lead actor Lau Kar-leung, one of Shaw Brothers' most technically rigorous filmmakers, structured the film around all eighteen traditional Chinese weapons, each given its own fight that earns it a place in the sequence. Alexander Fu Sheng, Gordon Liu and Lau Kar-wing complete the cast. The action sequences are shot with minimal cutting — what you see is what the performers could actually do.
Underneath the fights runs a dark thread: men die because they believed faith was armour. That gives the film more weight than the average genre entry, and Lau Kar-leung was rare enough to use it. Stream Legendary Weapons of China (1982) online on iFILM.
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