🍿For a Lau Kar-leung film there’s not much fighting in Challenge of the Masters. There’s a fair amount of action, but only two fights.
“Wait! “, people might say, “There’s a ton of fighting in Challenge of the Masters!” But I think there are three kinds of ‘martial arts’ scenes in Challenge: Brawling, Posing and Fighting.
The brawls are the skirmishes between the various schools. These are frantic melees made up of dozens of people. No rules, no need for precise choreography, just a lot of flailing.
The posing is in the smaller inter-school battles. These look like fights, but the choreography is stagey and slower. These are schools showing off their skills, but not committing to an actual fight. It’s two dudes at the bar puffing out their chests.
Finally, the fights. These have two combatants, are fluidly choreographed and they mean something. In one a fighter is killed and in the other mercy is granted. And the outcomes of these fights tie in to the more philosophical bent of Challenge, which is far more about the mental/ethical side of martial arts than the physical.
This makes for kind of an odd movie, to be honest. There’s always kind of a lot going on, but a lot of it doesn’t have a lot of impact. Which I think is by design, and I think Lau Kar-leung and Ni Kuang should be congratulated for trying something headier.
Sadly the dang Celestial re-relase does this film no favors. As a film from a high-profile director I’m not sure how this got released with its weird color problems. I watched this on Arrow but I’m pretty sure their copy came straight from Celestial, and it’s full of weird, transient color errors. These look like emulsion scratches, but they are too quick. I’m sure they came from the automated ‘restoration’ tool that Celestial used for all the Shaw films. It’s not as bad as some of the rereleases of older Shaw films, but it’s still distracting.
