“The Maids of Heavenly Mountains” stars three hyper-glamorous actresses and as a bonus one of them plays twin sisters. It touches on reincarnation, revenge and the persistence of both love and hate across generations. A central image is the Eight Fairies, a group of immortals that is an important part of Buddhist beliefs. One assumes that there was a plot at some point during the conception of this movie but if there was none of it survived in the final product. The characters’ actions probably make sense from some perspective but not the one from which I was viewing this movie. The quality of the stunts ranges from decent to dull. The ending is as confusing and contrived but no more so that the rest of the film which has odd gimmicks like the Melting Stance that turns one’s opponent to ash, a confused monk who is given a special jade ornament that will identify him as worth of receiving a lost sutra, a chess playing monk with extraordinary Kung Fu and Senior, who is seems to be the villain of the piece but who is convinced by Li Chong Hoi to chop off his own leg.

It is, however, well worth seeing. The presence Brigitte Lin, Sharla Cheung and Gong Li is a completely compelling reason to spend ninety minutes in front of the screen. Actually any two of the three would be enough. I find Brigitte Lin one of the sexiest screen actresses over the past couple of decades; Gong Li is and should be a superstar and Sharla Cheung is just beautiful. One or more of them is onscreen most of the time and when they are not there is enough going on to forestall boredom until the next appearance. Since two of them lead warring kung fu sects and the third either represents or tries to thwart (or both) the current master of martial arts, they are never gone for long.

“The Maids of Heavenly Mountain” rates a seven but a bit of an odd one. Six points for the three leads, one for everything else.