Shaolin Wooden Men

Bagus Banget filem Nya.

Recently seeing the rough and ready To Kill With Intrigue (also reviewed), I decided to continue my viewing of Jackie Chan titles, by meeting the wooden men. View on the film: Chopping open a sparkling soundtrack and a print with a fitting level of film grain, 88 Films present a jam packed transfer, backed by two great audio commentaries. Not saying a single word of dialogue for almost the whole run time, Jackie Chan displays his impressive technical prowess in the training montages, but the deafening silence, sadly leaves Little Mute appearing to be detached, and Chan to be keeping a distance, from really digging into the character. Starting proceedings with a seven minute cold opening fight, the director brushes pass the shining, lush outdoor locations in South Korea, and strikes straight into a shambles atmosphere, where the crash-zooms and jumbled jump-cuts stumble along with a aimless screenplay by Hsin Chin towards the Action set-pieces being given no room to breath, and left for dead in the mud, by the wooden men.

Can you imagine Jackie Chan as the worst student in a martial arts school? I know, it's crazy, but that's the premise of Shaolin Wooden Men. He plays Brother Mute, with a self-explanatory name. He also doesn't smile, so if you find yourself wondering if the sweet, comical fellow from the '90s is actually the same young kid in the mid-'70s, don't feel bad. This is also the last movie he made before getting plastic surgery on his eyes, in case you can't put a finger on exactly what looks so different. Although I completely support self-improvement and self-confidence, it makes me so sad that Jackie felt he wasn't handsome enough and needed "American" eyes. Back in 1976, he was a very good-looking young man, except for the haircut - and everyone had that haircut in the 1970s! There was absolutely nothing wrong with his face. I'll get off my soapbox. If it made him happy, I'm happy for him. I just hope he didn't have inner pain that plagued him. Back to the actual movie: In Shaolin Wooden Men, Jackie is ridiculed by the other monks-in-training because he's uncoordinated and weak. When he ventures into a forbidden cave, he meets an old prisoner who used to be a great kung fu master; studying from him may be forbidden, but it's the only real chance Jackie has. I love seeing the old-fashioned training sequences ("wax on, wax off") that show intense inner discipline. In one exercise, Jackie transitions from a plank position (on top of wooden posts) to a handstand and does upside down, vertical push-ups. In another, sweat drips off his brow as he balances an enormous boulder on his back while doing (regular, thank goodness) push-ups. I know old movies from the 1970s aren't everyone's cup of tea. Even if you love Jackie Chan, you might think watching the Police Story series takes you back far enough. But just give one of the oldies a try, either this one or Drunken Master. He's very young and has a completely different style on camera than at the cusp of the millennium. In this movie, you'll get to see the immense treat of watching Jackie battle it out with a dozen wooden men (hence the title) in training. The automatons have weapons and unpredictable flailing limbs, but sticks it out and gives the camera a great show!

(Partial credit to IMDb) Jackie witnesses the death of his father, at the hands of a merciless killer, who just happens to be a martial arts master. Jackie vows to never speak again until he avenges the death of his Father, and become a Shaolin Monk. He encounters many kooky characters along the way, and befriends them. They all teach him different aspects of Kung-Fu (Drunken, killing, slippery snake, and more) I wouldn't exactly call this movie great entertainment, but it does manage to entertain for the most part. Right from the outset of the movie we are treated to rather lengthy fight sequences. The plot is nothing special. It's the typical "train me Fung-Fu" type of thing at this juncture, with plenty of slapstick involving the token drunk, among other things. The Wooden Men thing is more than just a gimmick. It acts as an insurmountable obstacle, no matter how great your Kung-Fu is. I won't spoil it, but the one involving Jackie Chan & The Wooden Men is absolutely exhilarating! I would consider it to be a fight sequence, essentially, and it's one of the greatest fight scenes I've ever witnessed in all my years of watching martial art films. Jackie's ability to move out of the way of these things countless times, time and time again is incredible. It's one of the coolest athletic feats i've ever seen. Jackie Chan has barely any dialog, as a matter of fact… He doesn't speak until the very end of the film (!) He is a mute for most of the duration, to sell the death of his Father. It's kinda hard to grade his performance because of it, but Jackie's presence can't be denied. He could peel a potato for an hour, and I'd probably be interested in all likelihood. The big fight at the end is also very enthralling. I wouldn't call this one of Jackie's best films, but its entertainment value is unequivocally high. If you manage to find it, and you're a big Jackie Chan fan, I definitely recommend seeing this movie. It's a thoroughly enjoyable, cheapie. 6.9/10

I suppose that the 1976 martial arts movie titled "Shaolin Wooden Men" (aka Shao Lin mu ren xiang") was a great movie back in the day when it was newly released. But sitting down to watch it for the first time in 2021, I have to say that the movie wasn't all that great. Of course I sat down to watch the 1976 movie because I am a fan of Jackie Chan and never had the chance to watch "Shaolin Wooden Men" before now in 2021. Sure, "Shaolin Wooden Men" was watchable, but it was held back by a lack of proper storyline. It was essentially just a movie that consisted of 90% fighting and very little effort put into constructing a wholehearted storyline. And for a Jackie Chan movie then it wasn't outstanding. Sure, he was new and up and coming back then, but this was not among his best of performances, neither in terms of martial arts, stunts or acting performances. Some of the scenes in the movie were interesting and nicely executed, don't get me wrong. But the movie was just suffering from an interior storyline which proved to be rather thin and weak. It should be said that most of the fight scenes throughout the course of "Shaolin Wooden Men" weren't really all that nicely performed. They were just too obviously staged and delivered in a manner that screamed 1-2-3, moves set up to be formed in a specific order. The fight scenes just didn't have that usual natural flow to them that Jackie Chan is known for. The scene with the wooden men, though, was actually quite impressive - stupid and silly, but impressive. "Shaolin Wooden Men" is a movie for the diehard fans of Jackie Chan. If you sit down to watch it because it is a martial arts movie, then chances are you will be left sorely disappointed. My rating of writer Hsin Chin and director Chi-Hwa Chen's 1976 movie lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.

The narrative of "Shaolin Wooden Men" is divided into two neat halves: the first delineates the struggles of Jackie Chan's character (a mute orphan) at Shaolin Temple, ending with his successful navigation of the gauntlet of titular wooden men; the second follows him into the world outside the monastery, as he tests his combat skills and discovers that people cannot always be taken at face value. The film never rises entirely above the conventions of its genre, but in depicting the friendship between Chan and Kam Kang (who plays a prisoner at the monastery), director Chen Chi-hwa effects some nice touches...and there are well-choreographed fights aplenty. Six and a half stars. (By the way, there's no historical evidence that those fearsome wooden fighting dummies ever existed at Shaolin. It's a great cinematic device, though.)

This is a very interesting Jackie Chan film. It has the usual revenge cliché's but already you can see several elements that would become common place in his later movies. Two scenes stand out in this movie: the opening scene with the fighting monks and the final fight scene where 'Dummy' confronts the killer of his father. The scenes with the Buddhist non are for some reason quite touching. This film is a must for die-hard Jackie Chan fans but if you are an occasional Jackie Chan viewer you might be put-off because this early movie is much darker in tone than his later movies (e.g. Project A) and thus has none of the humor that characterizes his later movies so much.

Vowed to remain silent until his father was avenged, Dubbed "dummy" by the other students, he proved himself more than capable as a fighter. I bought this video some years back and I recall it had the title "Shao Lin Temple of Doom". I remember the plot very well as it was one of my favourite Jackie Chan movies. The wooden men reference made me wonder if it was the same film and the synopsis from others here assured me it was. It may possibly have been that the company doing the packaging for the DVD I bought didn't translate the tile at all, they probably tried to use the cover picture to figure out the translation and got it totally wrong. As usual, Jackie Chan is a master at injecting a little comedy into an otherwise, serious story. He also does all of his own stunts and often there is an out takes section at the end of his film showing, not only forgotten lines and such, but some ways his stunts have gone terribly wrong. He often pushes the limit of human capability with his stunts and pays for it with injuries. However, the final result makes you wonder if he used camera tricks to do it but no, he doesn't do camera tricks to make himself look almost superhuman, it comes naturally.

Pure A jackie film with a subplot wrapped into a subplot putting this revenge story with fantastic kungfu sequences on display. Kung fu classic.

A Jackie Chan movie is like pizza, even when it's bad it's still pretty good. First the good, it's a standard revenge plot. There's nothing wrong with seeing that for the millionth time. We're here for the martial arts not the story and the martial art does deliver. Even the hokey part fighting the wooden men (which easily could have failed) was done surprisingly well. The movie never dragged and the funny parts were reasonably funny. There was the expected build up to the big fight at the end and the fight finale could have been better but again, that pizza analogy. The bad part was making Jackie a mute until the last fight. Whoever's idea that was (did I hear someone mumble Lo Wei?) totally blew it. Really, not that I love to hear his voice or anything and it would have been dubbed by some British guy anyway, but the hero has to say a few syllables. I really think that keeping Jackie silent made the difference between this movie being a miss instead of a hit on it's initial movie theater run. Think of how history would have changed if Jackie came to stardom in 1976 instead of a few years later! The world would be a different place and we all might have our flying cars if Jackie had only spoken up sooner. Back in July of 2012, I posted the above review here. Today I watched the movie again. I decided to edit my review to compare the two views. I stand by everything written in my original post. Today I would change nothing in the original post and would add as below. I had a problem with the final fight. Jackie fights Kang Chin first and that is all wrong. Kang Chin's henchmen would certainly intercept Jackie before he could get to their big boss. The fight against Kang Chin must be absolute last. Also in the Jackie versus Kang Chin fight sequence it looks like Kang Chin is attacking and Jackie defending. Jackie should appear aggressive, attacking with full power and low accuracy. He could even act angry. Instead it looks like Kang chin is leading with his dance moves and Jackie is following. Despite that I still consider the movie above average for the year and genre. I also recommend this movie to all fans of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984.