The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)

Truly Dreadful Film

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Absolutely the worst movie.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This is for me one of the funniest movies ever. It has slapstick, cross-dressing, gender-bending, confused identities, ridiculous costumes, over the top martial arts battles and some cultural references I didn't get. Don't try to figure out the plot or story line there isn't much of either one of those. But there are a number of laugh out loud moments, I think the movie might be much funnier in Cantonese, the English subtitles seem to work well here. Spoiler here, one of the funniest moments in the movie is when one of the characters starts singing to the melody of the intro of the William Tell overture, that cracks me up every time I see it. So there you have it this movie is the winner of "Best Use of the William Tell Overture(with lyrics)" I can only imagine how much funnier it is in Cantonese.

There are comedies out there that are so out-of-this-world and wild that you would have fun with, but they at least have somewhat of a plot or story that you can follow. This film is such a fantasy mess with childish acting and a script that goes no where that I couldn't find myself to finish it.Never mind that this film features a prominent Hong Kong cinema cast, including Leslie Cheung, Carina Lau, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Veronica Yip. It's such a nonsensical and dumb movie that you would find even Saturday morning cartoons have more meaning than this.Do yourself a favor and stay away from this movie! There are a lot of better stuff from Hong Kong cinema.Grade F

There's "anything goes" and there's "Eagle Shooting Heros". About as unhinged as HK style comedy can get. Shot during a lull in shooting Wong Kar Wai's "Ashes of Time", this film seems partially improvised on the spot.There's some sort of plot but it's really an excuse for the stars to run about in crazy "Persian" costumes or to cross-dress. Explosion kung fu, a gorilla, a 6 ft. talking bird, a floating head, flying boots, time-reversing kung fu, a soccer match and lots of unrestrained wire fu. It begins crazy, stays crazy and ends crazy.Does it work? The actors are having fun and that rubs off on the viewer, however I found the film's lack of a real structure tiresome. The scenes comes off more like elaborate TV skits. Lots of obscure HK film references might bore the average viewer. But to the film's credit every time I was losing interest they do something so silly I was laughing again. The energy is so high that the hit and miss nature of the whole production isn't much of a problem. The martial arts are done for comedy's sake and are really sped up.This is one of the most extreme examples of wacky HK comedy. Not used to HK comedy? You might be advised to skip this one at first. Or get ready to watch it over the course of several viewings because it can be exhausting to watch.

Fast in pace and rich in adventures, extravagance, color and music, "Eagle Shooting Heroes" adopts the same characters of "Ashes of Time" but, unlike Kar-Wai's epic movie, here they stand on the screen with the sole purpose of entertaining... and they fully succeed!The movie can be roughly divided into 3 parts: in the first part, which takes place over a wide landscape, we get to meet the 9 (!) protagonists one by one, and learn about their quest (it can be love, world domination, revenge or achieving nirvana). Lin Ching Hsia and Chiu-Wai in particular shine and deliver the first ferocious confrontation of the movie, by showing us two terrific kung-fu moves: the "Sea can't be Measured" and the "Toad Shen-Kong".Once we have met all the characters, the second part gathers them together in the enclosed space of an inn, so we see them interact. Hysterically funny is Joey Wang, who may be Leslie Cheung's sweetheart, but apart from that bears very little that can be referred to as sweet. Highly entertaining are also Ka-Fai and Jacky Cheung, who try to win the resistance of their loved ones with their musical talent.Finally, the third part shows the ultimate confrontation. The ending may actually be the only flaw of the movie, and I personally agree with the character interpreted by Leslie Cheung, who at one point states "too ridiculous!".However, apart from the bizarre ending, this is an excellent movie... but be prepared for many surprises! And if you thought the cross-dressing of Ranma and Final Fantasy VII are extreme, be ready to change your rankings, as far as extravagance is concerned! 9/10PS: The DVD (from Ah-Mei) allows selection of Mandarin or Cantonese language (with English/Chinese subtitles burned on the movie), but other than that, no extra feature is included at all.