1970’s “Heroic Ones” is a bit of a departure from your usual period martial arts epic, in that it is set in the Tang Dynasty (which, for the uninitiated, is WAY before most kung fu films are set – up to 1,000 years before, to be exact) and that the protagonists are Mongol barbarians.

The plot is an absolute bugger to follow sometimes, but it goes something like this: King Jing of the Mongols has thirteen warrior sons and is at war with King Wang. After an attack on Wang's town of Changon goes awry, the warrior sons take refuge in a house - where the traitorous 4th and 12th sons try to rape the occupant, only for her honour to be saved by the 13th son (David Chiang). On their return back to their castle, the 13th son begs the king to lift the death sentence imposed on the two brothers. The king relents and instead issues the two with a severe drubbing with an army stick.

More attacks follow, and instead of handing over the territory to King Jing, Wang burns his own town to the ground. A stroke of tactical genius.

Furthermore, the 4th and 12th sons side with an aide of the Emperor and plot to kill the 13th son – the man that saved their lives.

This film really is an epic in every sense of the word, and uses every old-school trick in the book in the action scenes – trampoline jumps, reverse photography and (a little) wirework. On one hand, the scale is absolutely breathtaking – the large-scale battles and the sets and locations are fantastic. However, the film occasionally trips over itself due to over-ambitiousness. Furthermore, fans of Ti Lung (who plays the 11th son) will be disappointed that he doesn’t get nearly as much screen time as David Chiang.
Also, the usually high quality subtitles from Celestial Pictures are a let down and suffer very badly from the sort of “Chinglish” we thought were a thing of the past (one of the better examples is: “Jin Si, your belly is open. Run!”).

The ending, without giving too much away, is perhaps THE most gruesome end to a Chang Cheh film – and coming from him, that really is saying something! It’s enough to give you nightmares, it really is…