Reviewed by: j.crawford Date: 12/23/2006 Summary: really quite good Donnie Yen and Hung Yan-Yan are featured in Yuen Wo-Ping's version of the Chinese war on opium. Yen plays Beggar So while Hung plays the bad Ching Prince who facilitates for the foreign drug importers. This film is a clone of Tsui Hark's popular Once Upon a Time in China and its sequels. You should be familiar with the "cashing in" segment of Hong Kong cinema that has producers copying anything that is popular at the box office. Heroes Among Heroes uses the same visual style, theme music, and copies the same serious tone when dealing with the political themes while much of the movie is played for laughs with Ng Man-Tat doing his comedic thing with Yen, Sheila Chan Suk-Laan, and Fennie Yuen Kit-Ying. Martial arts sequences are really quite good. Master Yuen uses every trick in his extensive repertoire to captivate his audience. Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: Sydneyguy Date: 12/02/2002 Summary: "Hero among Heroes" is "Beggar So" The Vcd i got actually had "Hero among Heroes" but originally this website had it as "Beggar So"!! This is your standard kung fu movie. This time, instead of Wong fei Hung being the central character, it's Begger Su, who was brought up by the leader of the beggar group. Begger Su's father thought this would teach him humility. There is plenty of good fighting scenes with little blood splatted on the tv set. Not a bad effort 7/10 Reviewer Score: 7

Reviewed by: MrBooth Date: 07/27/2001 Summary: Low budget Wong Fei Hung spin off HEROES AMONG HEROES (aka BEGGAR SO): So what is it with Donnie Yen and the speed-up thing? It seems to be that he insists on being undercranked to an absurd degreee, which really just hides the talent he does have. Somebody should have pointed this out to him nearer the start of his career, and he might not have ended up failing to reach the potential that Yuen Wo Ping at least thought he had. HEROES... is another entry in the Wong Fei Hung series, and as somebody once said "You can never have too many films about Wong Fei Hung". It's clearly trying to be ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA but on a much lower budget. The film starts of promisingly with huge armies of people running about in period costume being upset about things, but then quickly falters as we get treated to some painfully unamusing comedy, mostly centred around So's father (Ng Man Tat) and his buck-teethed Aunt (played by somebody I never want to see in a film again - she was really annoying). Amongst this we get Beggar So meeting a very Aunt 13 type character, played by Fennie Yuen, and also getting into some minor disagreements with Wong Fei Hung (played her by Wong Chuen(2) according to HKMDB). Fei Hung is busy worrying about the opium problem, whilst So is being a little arrogant and resents WFH's reputation as the greatest Kung Fu Master in Canton. After a while we are introduced to Prince 13 (played by Hung Yan Yan and dubbed by somebody inappropriate), who is the corrupt official cooperating with the evil westerners to monopolise the opium market and exploit his countrymen. He manages to manipulate So's arrogance to get him to fight on his side against Wong Fei Hung. Much of the first half of the film is a mess and irritating, but around the half way mark it manages to pull itself together. It drops the comedy & irrelevant side stories for the most part, and focuses on the Wong Fei Hung / Prince 13 conflict, with Donnie caught in the middle. With a new focus comes more quality and intensity, and the last half of the film is very enjoyable. Wong Chuen(2) is good as Wong Fei Hung, carrying something close to Jet Li's gravitas, and Hung Yan Yan is good as the evil Prince. Donnie gets by as So. There's quite a lot of action in the latter half, and most of it is less sped up than the early Donnie scenes. It's fairly typical Yuen clan stuff, but obviously didn't have the budget of the better films of the period as the sequences don't seem to have had as much time or attention put into them. Overall, not a bad entry into the genre, but would have been better for having 15-20 minutes edited out of it I expect. The World Video DVD is watchable... widescreen at about 16:9, with embedded subtitles that are sometimes hard to read but not the worst. There's a couple of places where the image flickers bizarrely for a minute, as if it were transferred from a VHS copy with slightly dodgy tracking, which in all probability it was. Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: Ash Date: 02/04/2001 Summary: Good Yuen woo-ping kung fu film! Heroes among heroes is another kung fu movie from the master: Yuen Woo-ping. It stars Donnie Yen (the greatest in my opinion!)) As usual, Yen kicks some major butts in this movie but the story is not really original: Opium dealing involving the ''evil'' british!!(Strongly reminiscent of Drunken Master 2, Tai chi 2 or even once upon a time in china!!) The actor who portrays Wong Fei Hong in the movie is also a good martial artist but Donnie, once again, steals the show with his grace and his charisma. He even uses the drunken style in this movie. There is a good amount of fights in this movie but they are short but the climactic fight is great. Watch this movie for the fights, not for the story, because the fights are from Yuen Woo-ping and Donnie Yen shines, as always!! 7.8/10

Reviewed by: spinali Date: 12/08/1999 Summary: NULL Fairly entertaining rehash of the usual elements. OfficerLam Che Chu and legendary kung fu physician Wong Fei Hong have joined forces to serve in the front lines against opium smugglers, and naive So Chen (Donnie Yen) alternately picks fights with shady characters from Fire Lotus Gang while stealing food for the poor. Meanwhile, a lovely school teacher (Fenny Yuen) is reviled by suspicious parents who think she's operating a whorehouse and pursued by powers behind the drug traffickers because she knows too much. Great fight with a girl who uses her ponytail as a whip! Another great fight using a ginseng root and smoking pipe against the Korean ginseng king! Contains inscrutable Chinese epigrams like, "Being stupid is difficult, and harder from clever to be stupid." Yes, rather. The movie ends with a spirited fight at the opium warehouse where all three heroes vanquish the smugglers and destroy their stockpile of drugs, using spears, flying fu, drunken-style fu, and pole fighting. Down with the evil Ching Dynasty! Hurray for the Han! (2.5/4) [Reviewed by Steve Spinali] Reviewer Score: 6