There’s been a time in my life when I was a die hard fan of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan action movies. I remember accompanying my cousins to a small theater in my area to watch these flicks. Of them, one great flick is Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow. watching this recently on a channel made me write a review on it. Action choreographer and legendary martial arts director Yuen Woo Ping directed this early and important film of Jackie Chan’s career in 1978. This film made Jackie a star in almost one night, and more was to come in form of Drunken Master very soon, and history tells the rest.
PLOT: Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow stars the sympathetic old man Siu Tien Yuen as the master of Snake style in kung fu. There’s also a "rival" style called Eagle style and these two styles compete together for students and power in the field of martial arts world. Jackie plays a poor and orphan youngster who gets to do nothing but wash floors in the Eagle school and occasionally, he is also used as a human "punchbag" in the training. Soon he gets enough and meets by accident the old man who eventually teaches Jackie the secrets of his Snake fighting style. The old man is hunted by the villain. Later once, mistaking him to be a good person Chan reveals to the villain the address of his guru Yuen who is almost killed. To his rescue Chan reaches and uses his cat-paw style of fighting, which he learnt by observing a cat that kills a snake in his storeroom.
The fights are indeed fantastic and they include also the magnificent kicks of the legendary taekwondo master Jang Lee Hwang, who plays the main villain in this film. The last fight between Jackie and Hwang is very long and full of adrenalin as these two masters let their peak powers flow fighting for their lives. Also the training scenes are very memorable and look painful! It isn’t easy to become a master of martial arts. There’s plenty of fights in this film and that’s about all this film is about and why it’s been done in the first place; the dialogue and screenplay are very shallow and often meaningless and there’s also some irritating use of music which tries to make the film more entertaining and funny to watch, but of course this was meant to be a comedy kung fu flick like Drunken Master and many others.
Still the film could have some depth and even message in it like many Bruce Lee films definitely have. But as far as one is interested in excellent martial arts fights and excitement, films like Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow are highly recommended, because there are no better substitutes in this field. If you prefer(as I do) more serious and dark martial art films, then I recommend Ronny Yu’s Bride With White Hair and Tsui Hark’s Blade, for instance. I just don’t like the often stupid humor in HK films and that’s why I don’t appreciate Snake as highly as I wanted to.
If you want to see a action packed comic kung fu film with the young and incredible Jackie Chan, then this film is worth buying or renting.