The 7 Grandmasters

An ageing kung fu master, about to retire, sets out to prove to himself that he has earned his title. His plan is to find the best master in each province and face them one by one. People travel with him along the way, and behind his back a trap is being set that he knows nothing about. Joseph Kuo's film keeps going for the fighting rather than for the story. Every encounter is in a different style and at a different tempo, and the choreography is cleaner than in most films of the period. The camera prefers to hold a scene in one take rather than cut it to pieces. It is still one of the most cited of the Taiwanese kung fu productions of the late seventies; the plot is thin, but the fight sections raise the level of the genre.