With a title like "The Thundering Sword" starring Cheng Pei Pei & Lo Lieh you will probably expect as I did to see a truly hard core Martial Art film. However this is really a love story with the Martial Art world set as the back drop. It is a type of re-telling of the classic tale of Romeo & Juliet.

The story basically is of two people of separate clans who fall in love and all the obstacles in their way. Much of these problems are brought on by the female lead character's violent tendecies. Now some of the instances that occur do seem a bit contrived but not overly so. My biggest complaint is that from their first meeting you see that Cheng Pei Pei's character is smitten for Hero Yu (Chang Yi), but Yu seems to be completely underwhelmed by their initial encounter. Once he found out she has the sword he suddenly is in love with her and wants to get married.

Cheng Pei Pei shows off her usual screen presence here. I found this performance to be much more "driven" than in "Come Drink With Me". Lo Lieh was grossly underused here but showed his usual intensity in the scenes he was in. As for Chang Yi. I don't want to call his performance in this movie "dreadful". I've seen dreadful acting and it's better than this.

As I noted earlier there really wasn't much action sequences in this film and what there was, wasn't anything that special either. so if you're looking for a great swordplay wu xia film watch the One-Armed Swordsman. If you want a tragic love story then check this one out.