Chor Yuen was Gu Long before he started filming Gu Long. The director's first wuxia film, made at Shaws' rival Cathay, finds him relishing in a mode of expression that would later become the signature style of the 'martial-arts suspense thriller' mini-genre. Chor grafts the quasi-psychological stylishness of his Cantonese melodrama onto this actioner, laying on thick the atmosphere by dialling up the fog machine and unleashing the colours from his camera's palette. He also stages his fights in modern dance-like choreography, with moves that are more graceful than ferocious and paused poses that are longer on expressive narcissism than continuity of action. Cold Blade is the quiet beginning of an aesthetic.
The story is based on a play written by famous playwright Yao Yiwei whose work takes adaptation from the novel in Sung Dynasty. The film describes Xiuxiu, a daughter of an aristocrat,who falls in love with her cousin who is a talented sculptor. Nevertheless they experience all kinds of difficulties during the process of trying to get married.
The Warring States Period was a time of regional conflict as warlords sought to annex their neighbors and consolidate power across China. Set amidst this backdrop, "Fire Bulls" is an epic tale of the survival of a people and the heroism of one man. As the Yen army gathers on the outskirts of Chi seeking to gobble up its neighbor, the people of Chi are faced with the fall of the capital.
Lau Leung-wah plays the titled character, a Chinese Robin Hood who robs the rich to help the poor. She is an early Republican Era Mulan, who switches effortlessly between charming gentility and agile ferocity, and Lau personifies her character's duality with a balance of grace and vigour. Chang Cheh, on the verge of fostering seismic changes in cinema with his martial-arts machismo, pens a script that captures the spirit of changing Chinese womanhood, underscored by a conflict between Black Butterfly and her father, a veteran detective.
