Eagle vs. Silver Fox is standard issue independent genre fare with mostly unknown players, slightly above average martial arts, and not enough of superkicker Hwang Jang Lee.

Jang Lee plays Silver Fox, a Manchurian warlord who is trying to stop messages from being sent south. An opening fight between Jang Lee and a messenger is one of the best in the film and features at least one incredible piece of legwork by Jang Lee that will leave you rewinding to see it again. He then disappears for the majority of the film and the story focuses on the son of one of the messengers who survives an attack. I’m going to take a stab and guess that the actor is Mario Chan who is billed second after Jang Lee. Mario is rescued by an old monk who trains him in a rare and powerful form of kung fu, shortly before the monk dies. But, before showing his rescue, director Godfrey Ho chooses to jump ahead to a point where Mario is a “wanderer” who walks into a teahouse to engage in your typical swagger and nose-thumbing confrontation with a number of Silver Fox’s thugs. After sending them packing, Mario is joined by Yu Ling, a woman who decides to follow him for reasons she initially keeps to herself. This is the first time I have actually been fooled into believing the female character dressed as a man is a man, that is, until her girlish dubbed voice chimed in.

As the pair journeys towards Silver Fox’s mansion, they come across another monk who turns out to be a friend of Mario’s former master. The three then team up to finish off Silver Fox’s men and eventually the warlord himself.

The kung fu action is mostly solid and Mario Chan performs well enough. Although not used frequently, Hwang Jang Lee does get in some terrific kicks, including a midair triple kick to the chest that I can only recall Donnie Yen performing. As a character though, Jang Lee is a disappointing villain compared to his better roles, such as in Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978). The person chosen to dub his voice makes him sound like a weasel and he’s killed off far too easily.

Godfrey Ho slips in a number of fun oddities in what would otherwise be a conventional film. At one point, Mario Chan literally glides towards his opponent which looks like he must have been on a rigged dolly. In another scene, he kicks an adversary up a staircase railing. If that sounds bad, the stuntman’s slide back down onto the railing post looked groin-crushingly painful. Later, two of Silver Fox’s strangest cronies sporting bald heads come at Mario with what looks like some sort of cartoonish gorilla style of kung fu. The last and most unusual scene features the monk who is able to knock down his opponents simply by swinging his staff in their direction. Plus, he’s able to move about in the blink of an eye. This sort of nonsense keeps the film on a light note. The problem is that its sporadic so the choreography looks like a hodgepodge of random and unexplained tricks.

While I wouldn’t say Eagle vs. Silver Fox is outright bad, it could have used sharper direction, something Godfrey Ho was never known for. Of course, the real selling feature is the presence of Hwang Jang Lee and he’s just not used effectively for the most part. But, with a bit of enjoyable humor reminiscent of a Trinity Spaghetti Western and at least some Jang Lee action, this film is worth a look for the avid to serious fan.

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