Chor Lau Heung


Reviewed by: PJ

December 30, 2004

Rating: four


Chor Lau Heung (CLH) 1995 is one of the best--certainly the most enjoyable--series on Chor Lau Heung. TVB's 1979 version is good but too old; Taiwan's 1985 version hurts just to look at; and Richie Ren's 2001 version is probably not even worth mentioning. Its only competition is TVB's 1984 version with Miu Kiu Wai, which is highly praised by fans. In any case, CLH 1995 is a series with hardly any originality, but the popular formula still works. Since there is another review with detailed summary of the plot, my analysis will take a different approach and concentrate on material not previously covered.

Characters (aside from CLH's friends):

Shang Guan Wu Ji (SGWJ) - daughter of the leader of the Sun Moon (SM) Sect

Prince Zhao Ming - son of the previous emperor

General Tai - Zhao Ming's most loyal pawn

Qiu Xing - young girl whom CLH saves in the desert.

Ah Bu - young boy who follows CLH to Dalibisi

Princess Sheng Nian - princess of Dalibisi, a small country in the deserts west of China

Cha Mu He - warrior of Dalibisi whose arranged marriage with Princess Sheng Nian makes him love the princess very much

Bai Di Lun - primary guard of the Dalibisi palace

Muo Yan - police of the imperial court (Jing Yi Wei) who is assigned to the case of the Buddhist Relic

Tian Feng 14 Lang - Japanese swordsman previously defeated by CLH

Si Cong Zhai Xing (SCZX) - slick thief who is assassinated for knowing too much of Zhao Ming's plots. Unlike CLH, SCZX will rob anyone

Lian Yi Shang - Beautiful woman who robs rich, corrupt officials

First of all, the acting by the leads is good, but the extras are beyond bad. Adam Cheng is still the CLH walked from the book; Sheng Meng Shen is a really funky Hu Tie Hua, but very quickly he became a favorite, because of his acting was very effective; Cynthia Khan is indeed very pretty as SGWJ, but her martial arts could have been utilized further in fight scenes; CLH's 3 female companions are adorable and sweet; and the villains are all nasty and suitable for their roles. The very minor actors probably didn't have any training, and many had that terrible Taiwanese accent. The worst is the ugly young CLH (during a flashback), who is just plain wrong to play the young womanizer. The second worst is probably the man who tried to divorce his wife in the middle of the street for Gao Ya Nan to see. The guy was definitely not acting.

The action is good in this 1995 series. Adam Cheng is doubled more than not doubled in fight scenes, but I have no complaints as long as the action is good. The finale is a bit short, but it's fast and furious. I do wish more locations were used to film the various regions, as it is obvious that same places are used over and over.

Before I make this sound like the most flawed series ever, I'd like to point out that there are many good things about it, but I am more interested in pointing out the flaws. During the two decades before this series, thousands of wuxia productions have been made, and by 1995 the genre was running out of ideas. There are many parts of the series that copy from others: some are 100% rip-offs, whereas others just borrow the idea. For example, anyone who has seen John Woo's "The Killer" will notice the famous dialogue between Chow Yun Fat and Danny Lee replicated to the exact same words in the first or second episode: "I believe in justice, but people don't believe in me... Good people are often misunderstood... You're not like a police at all... You're not like an assassin either." Also, When the SM sect was wiped out, the way Mr. Shang Guan escaped is an obvious clone of a scene from Gu Long's "Meteor, Butterfly, Sword." I spotted a lot of such instances, but I would not want to find out every such case that I did not notice (I'm sure I missed many).

The variety of music is good but not original. The end song to "Madam White Snake" (Taiwan), for example, is awkwardly inserted during many scenes. I haven't heard the other songs elsewhere, but chances are they were not original, save the opening and ending themes. Strangely, the theme song "Liu Xiang Song" is not featured on the VCD; instead we are treated with "Big Sky, Big Land" as the opening song. At first I didn't care for the music, but after a while I REALLY got into it, and now the songs are a pleasure to listen to.

Several things in this series annoy me tremendously, and all of them have to do with the fact that every character is presented as rather simple minded. First, every time there is an emergency and person 1 calls person 2, person 2 always thinks person 1 is overreacting and says, "calm down, what could possibly go wrong?" I mean, these people can learn after 20 times that when someone acts like there is an emergency, there really is an emergency. But they never learn.

Second, most characters ask many unnecessary questions like "why?" and "what do you mean?" when the answer is obvious. I don't like the fact that Gu Long makes his characters' minds slower than a turtle's when they can solve world's greatest mysteries. Perhaps they are so good at putting big puzzles together that they can't understand simple things any more, but that doesn't make sense.

Another problem is the redundant scenes. I guarantee you won't see less than 20 scenes of the exact same things happening between Qiu Xing and Ah Bu, as well as between CLH and SGWJ. Every time Ah Bu sees Qiu Xing (which is a lot of times), he tries to please her by giving her flowers or tease her -- sometimes crossing the line -- and he always gets rejected, but the guy never gives up, and it gets really old after a while.

Also, I can't even count the number of times the "good guys" (CLH, Hu Tie Hua, etc) had the opportunity to catch a bad guy but passed up, leading to more complications later. I mean, why let go of an assassin when all they need to do is chase and catch? If CLH had killed Zhao Ming's general at the temple on Hei Mu Ya (Black Wood Cliff), then he wouldn't have gone on to kill millions of people later on (including CLH's friend Mr. Zuo and the people of Dalibisi). I realize that this is the writers' strategy to stretch the story, but really it just makes the good guys look incredibly careless.

As always in a wuxia story, anyone who isn't a major character is portrayed as rude, brainless, and begging for death (what can you expect, when even the main good guys [CLH] are presented as possessing half of these traits). I am sick of seeing the same situations where an unworthy man laughs as he touches a woman, and when she refuses, he gets pissed off but his kung fu is always inferior to hers. Can we get a guy who is the #1 swordsman in this kind of situation for a change? Also, the people of the pugilistic world are just plain idiots. If they think about things at all, they would know that SGWJ is not the killer of their masters, because it is too obvious that someone powerful in the dark is trying to cause war. But these pinheads refuse to reason with the experienced CLH, making it easy for evildoers to take advantage.

In addition, some things that are explained earlier are brought up later exactly the way it was settled before, which I attribute to the carelessness of the creators of the show. This flaw, or intention perhaps, is equally frustrating as the previously mentioned.

Now, I just need to figure out what Prince Zhao Ming meant in the following sentence as he passed up the perfect opportunity to kill CLH and his friends: "Instead of eating your vegetables, why not change and then get rid of them? Mwahahaha."

Here is the story in a nutshell: Chor Lau Heung (CLH) is accused of raping, and to prove his innocence, he uncovers more conspiracies than he ever imagined, with help from his friends. The story can be split into two parts. The first part is about CLH's search for the Buddhist Relic, and the second part is about the Sacred Volumes (Kui Hua Bao Dian). If you want to know the full story chronologically, read on.

(Contains all the spoilers)

Before CLH's time, the Sacred Volumes had originated in the Shaolin Temple. The leader of the Sun Moon sect, SGWJ's father, stole the manuscript, but his wife and he never succeeded in mastering the shen-gong. A monk copied the manuscript from the couple, but he was forced to give the script to the evil Prince Zhao Ming, who wanted to first rule jianghu, then the whole country. The monk told the prince that the missing portions of the script could be obtained from the SM sect, so the prince spent years learning the shen-gong (supernatural power) and plotted a wicked trap for CLH to fall in.

At the same time, 10 years before the story starts, CLH defeated a Japanese swordsman, who was incapable of understanding CLH's words of wisdom. He thought CLH called him dumb, and for this one word he practiced kung fu for 10 years, changes his name to Tian Feng 14 Lang, and will do anything to beat CLH.

Several years down the road, still before the story begins, the king of Dalibisi made his reading room a forbidden area of the palace. One day, the queen heard a desperate voice in the forbidden room, where she discovered the dead emperor as well as Si Cong Zhai Xing (SCZX) inside. In fact, SCZX had come to steal treasure, but he accidentally saw the murder of the emperor, so he was locked inside. The queen released SCZX but didn't make the news public, because she too had a plan of taking over the throne.

Zhao Ming's initial goal is for CLH to get the Buddhist Relic, but that scheme didn't work out. In fact, CLH not only digested the Buddhist Relic (which caused trouble for SGWJ, because the Relic was the holy treasure of the SM sect), but he also uncovered the conspiracy of Zhao Ming's pawn impersonating the emperor of Dalibisi. Next, Zhao Ming wiped out the SM sect and masters the Sacred Volumes to the fullest, easily triumphing over what "little" wu-gong of CLH. Unfortunately for Zhao Ming, there is a Converse of the Sacred Volumes, created especially to overcome the Sacred Volumes. With this shen-gong, CLH removes the kung fu from Zhao Ming, leaving him useless. But that's hardly the end. Zhao Ming teamed up with the evil Japanese swordsman to turn all of CLH's friends against him, and the plan was very successful. Gao Ya Nan "killed" Hu Tie Hua; Hu Tie Hua wanted to kill CLH; SGWJ wanted to kill CLH, Princess Sheng Nian wanted to kill CLH; and Ah Bu also wanted to kill CLH. With so many friends unexpectedly trying to kill him, CLH's life wais in critical danger.

The ending, or the outcome of the climax, is most unsatisfying. I find it especially weak because there are 40 episodes, and yet the outcome is so squeezed. The writers could have taken out 10 episodes without affecting the storyline; instead they decided to keep the redundant scenes but compress the ending/climax down to almost nothing. Also, the ending is a rip-off of the big duel in "Luk Siu Fung," which took place inside the Forbidden Palace with a limited number of people who could enter; the concept is an exact copy. As everyone knows, the ending makes the most crucial impression, so if it's bad, the series is bad. I can forgive a bad beginning if the ending is good, but I can't forgive a bad ending even if the rest of the series were perfect.

Selected Character endings:

Ah Bu - what happened to this kid? We don't know because the writers didn't bother. Ah Bu was poisoned by Tian Feng 14 Lang, and we don't see him cured or dead. CLH was supposed to obtain cure from TF14L, but we don't know if he did.

Qiu Xing - she got what she deserved, and she died in CLH's arms.

Zhao Ming and his pawns - They were captured by the emperor and probably executed.

Princess Sheng Nian - after being kidnapped by Zhao Ming, she first resisted, but eventually she gave in to his tenderness, and they had a child. She was left alone when Zhao Ming was arrested.

Parents of SGWJ - they were killed by Zhao Ming.

Gao Ya Nan - she was killed by Hu Tie Hua aftering "poisoning" him.

Shang Guan Wu Ji - she of course ended up with CLH, both retired from the martial world.

All of CLH's friends - Either dead or we don't know.

(End of spoilers)

About the characters, I have mixed opinions on most of them. Let's start with SGWJ. She can be nice sometimes, but she is too vulnerable and impulsive, and she is a real pain when she acts upon first judgment. There are plenty of cases where she runs away due to simple misunderstandings or minor difficulties, and it creates unnecessary trouble for everyone, which I think is very childish. I don't think she deserves CLH's true love, because any time trouble comes between them, she'll just run away. Princess Sheng Nian, on the other hand, is calmer and does not act as unreasonably, but I don't like her as much as SGWJ. During CLH's stay in Dalibisi, she was all over him as if SGWJ wasn't noticing. The fact is that she knew CLH likes SGWJ, but that didn't stop her obsession with him. I understand the natural feelings, but the princess had to have known that her fiancé Cha Mu He would do something stupid due to hatred and jealousy of CLH, and he did do something REALLY stupid that ruined the whole country.

While many women are obsessed with CLH, Ah Bu is the most obsessive love-stricken fellow. As previously mentioned, he tried so many times to win Qiu Xing's heart with the same boring means that he was just totally blind. I mean, the guy obviously could not see that Qiu Xing was not interested in him AT ALL, and he played some really nasty tricks on her, such as lying to her about CLH's favorite dish, and I can only imagine how awful she felt about those incidents. I don't think Ah Bu ever believed Qiu Xing was the spy, even though all evidence points to her. As for her, I initially liked her a lot, but where she should have appreciated CLH's kindness, she betrayed him viciously, and that's when I stopped liking her character. As far as acting, she's pretty good; however, there are people who are natural liars, and she isn't one of them, as she is terrible at making up stories. Otherwise she might have been able to deceive CLH even longer.

Although Prince Zhao Ming is the vicious savage, I found him a cool character in his early appearances, like when he drank wine with Hu Tie Hua. By the way, that was Mr. Wine's worst mistake ever (making friends with Zhao Ming), which lead to a lot of bad things later, although nobody blamed him. Ji Bing Ye always names his price, but when friends are in real trouble, he is a good supporter. Gao Ya Nan's obsession with Hu Tie Hua is of course over exaggerated, which is probably the most humorous subplot. I still like her despite her lack of intelligence. I also like the leader of the SM sect, who is really kinder than he first appears. Lian Yi Shang the devil woman is an interesting character. If I'm not mistaking, that is also the name of the tragic white-haired maiden, so the writers probably just annexed her character. It's pretty weird to have done such a thing, but CLX 2001 certainly learned from it by adding Dagger Lee to the story. In this story, Lian Yi Shang's hair also turned white.

And so some characters give us insight to morality: Qiu Xing served Zhao Ming unconditionally, but he did not hesitate to kill her once he didn't have use for her. The queen of Dalibisi thought she and Bai Di Lun were invincible together, but he betrayed her as soon as he could. The monk who told Zhao Ming to conquer the SM sect was punished by Buddha. Cha Mu He destroyed his own country and himself by trusting Zhao Ming. The Medicine King cruelly used live people to experiment deadly medicine, but he could escape his own medicines. All of these instances remind us that there is always punishment to an evil person.

Most serious worker: Muo Yan

Most ruthless villain: Tian Feng 14 Lang

Most ambitious: Zhao Ming

Most careless person: Mr. Wine Hu Tie Hua

Most obsessed lover: Ah Bu (to Qiu Xing)

Most vulnerable lover: Shang Guan Wu Ji

Most tragic character: Leader of SM sect

Most stubborn: Lian Yi Shang

Most powerful fighters: 1) Damo, 2) CLH after gaining insight to Damo's wisdom, 3) Tian Feng 14 Lang, 4) Zhao Ming, 5) Shaolin Monk who practiced Sacred Volumes, 6) Leader of SM sect

Best overall actor: Sheng Meng Shen as Hu Tie Hua couldn't have been better. He may not be an attractive Hu Tie Hua, but he made the character such an onscreen delight. He impressed me more than Adam Cheng (who is my favorite actor).

Best actress: Cynthia Khan did a pretty good job, and I think she outclassed every actress. However, the best overall actress is the little girl who played Song Tien Er.

Favorite scenes:

-CLH overcoming Medicine King's five floors of traps.

-Leader of Sun Moon sect revealing the history of the Sacred Volumes.

-Leader of Sun Moon sect talking about the real reason he hasn't taught the Sacred Volumes to his daughter.

-CLH fighting temple guards in the rain with umbrellas.

The most difficult scenes to watch are the deceptions and misunderstandings:

-Mr. Zuo mistaking SGWJ for the murderer of top leaders.

-SGWJ deciciding to leave on several occasions without looking into facts.

-Qiu Xing causing hostility between CLH and SGWJ.

-Cha Mu He getting really pissed off with the Princess's obsession with CLH.

-CLH pretending to be amnesiac in Dalibisi.

Overall, this is a great series to watch, even though I may have given it some seemingly harsh comments. Inevitably, such a long series has its tedious moments, but that's what the fast-forward button is for.

Story: 4
Acting: 4.5
Music: 4
Action: 4
Ending: 0.5
Production values: 4


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