A general (Han Ying-chieh) kills a member of the Fook Yun Clan and several of the victim’s associates seek revenge by getting Wong Fei-hung’s (Kwan Tak-hing) two leading students to teach them a deadly kicking style.

Magnificent Kick stars the venerable Kwan Tak-hing in what amounts to possibly the least successful of several kung fu movies he appeared in following his official retirement from playing Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung in a popular series of nearly 100 films running from 1949 to 1970. This film heavily exploits his screen persona without generating any life of its own. The kung fu action is only passable, the story is tiresome, and there are no memorable performances from the lesser known cast.

One of the problems this film shares with many old school kung fu pictures is a difficulty in discerning who the protagonist is. As far as the plot is concerned, the lovely Wong Hang-sau should be the lead. She plays one of four Fook Yun clan members who fail in an attempt to get Wong Fei-hung to teach them his famous kicking style, which is referred to in other films as the ‘Shadowless’ or ‘No Shadow Kick.’ But she shares at least equal screen time with Wong’s lead student as played by Jason Pai Piao, who is the film’s most notable martial arts actor. Then there is Cheung Lik (Super Kung Fu Kid), who never really was successful as a lead and just disappears midway through after taking a beating.

Worst of all, this film is sloppily put together with a very slapdash script and mediocre kung fu. Kwan Tak-hing has a few scenes early on where he is giving instruction and performs some slow, but steady kung fu. We get to see a lion dance where Wong’s students face off against two other lions, but the scene pales miserably in comparison to excellent lion dance scenes in films like Dreadnought (also with Kwan Tak-hing) and The Young Master. Like Cheung Lik, Kwan is forgotten midway through as the focus shifts to his two students and Wong’s attempt to get them to help. This setup is poor with little opportunity for any good action. There are some unconvincing and dull training sequences and a predictable bit of misfired romancing between Wong and Jason. The “Magnificent Kick” in the film amounts to little more than Jason half-heartedly kicking over a number of pre-sawed poles. The villain of the piece is played by veteran Han Ying-chieh in one of his more lackluster roles as a disinterested, retired general. When our heroes finally challenge Han, a standard fight ensues that isn’t really worthy of mention.

The English dubbed version features extremely stereotypical dialogue for the genre, but nothing especially funny. The classic Wong Fei-hung theme music is used, but just about every time a fight breaks out lousy ’70s funk kicks in.

Magnificent Kick is absolutely the worst kind of kung fu movie. It’s not bad enough to have comic value and not good enough to remember anything you saw. The only thing of any value is for viewers interested in the genre’s history to see Kwan Tak-hing in the first half as most of his earlier official Wong Fei-hung movies no longer exist.

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