Excellent wire-fu movie, close to the bests of the genre
When you watch Fong Sai-Yuk, you are in front of a typical kung-fu movie from the 90's: it's wired, it's period movie, it's fast, it's mixing genres, it's not really a big budget, it's a lot of fun. The cast is really nice, with cute girls, Jet Li as naive as he can be, Chiu Man-Cheuk in his first big role, and Josephine Siao stealing the show. Corey Yuen shows that he is one of the best fight directors on the market, even if he is not matching the best of the bests. The choregraphies are really good looking and inventive here (especially the ones at the beginning), even if we can see the wires too often. The production value is quite high, but not matching the cream like Fist of legend and Once upon a time in China. The average DVD is not really helping much though, with its dirty image and quite faded colors... Another interesting point is the mix of the genres, with some comedy and drama. Both are quite successfull, making the movie less predictable than usually. It's kung-fu comedy at the beginning, but less and less through the movie, with some efficient drama scenes.
So finally, Fong Sai-Yuk is a must-see for the fans of wire-fu, without question. It's just lacking a little something in every department to be the equal of the masterpieces of the genre. But it's still a very impressive entertainer.
