Lately I've been paying more attention to Terry Fan Siu Wong. I caught him 6 months ago in Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger, and then saw him in such TV series as "Demi Gods Semi Devils 1997," and recently in "Dragons of the Orient" in which he demonstrates incredible skill and agility. It's a shame that Fan hasn't advanced much in his movie career. I would love to see more martial arts features starring him.

The Chinese name of Ricky, Li Wang (meaning Power Master), makes more sense when his uncle spoke, "You showed great strength as a child, so I called you [Ricky]." Does Ricky mean anything in English? Well, not that I know of, but Power Master is a well-known character in East Asia. The character has even been implemented in a Japanese video game called Saturday Night Slammasters (and in its spin-offs).

Before I saw the movie, my impression of Ricky was that of an angry bully. However, a nice surprise turned out that he is actually a pretty nice guy: "Teach me qi-gong, so I help the weak," he pleads to his uncle. It's also pretty cool to see him playing flute. Unfortunately, this movie depicts so much gore and cruelty that Ricky's good nature cannot be felt.

I watched the English dub, which is somewhat better than usual. Unfortunately, or maybe not so unfortunately, they renamed all the characters into English names like Charlie and Oscar. The spoken English and the Eng subtitles are two different things. The female voices were rather weird, because they sounded 70% male and 30% female. But not to worry, because there is only one female character (who speaks anyway) in the movie.

Although this is not the most violent movie, it still makes one wonder how Fan can sleep at night the week after shooting the finale ala "ground meat" scene. If gore is your thing, this may be your best thing. Personally, violence is not my cup of tea, although Fan Siu Wong is quite effective as the bittersweet Ricky. He should do much better roles, no doubt.

[6/10]