Surprisingly for a Wang Yu film, the pace is pretty slow to start with. But fear not, once things hot up, you'll be exhausted just watching it. The battle starts a bit before half-way and, from then on, this film jumps from good to superb. Even compared with modern HK action classics, this is surely one of the best (and certainly among the longest) well-staged swordfighting battle scenes ever filmed.
Hypnotic, exhausting and simply stunning.