Ten Fingers of Steel

Poverty row kung-fu entertainment. With one clue, a perfume sachet, Tai Yuang (an interestingly unheroic, almost diffident performance from Wang Yu) comes to Japan to seek the villain who murdered his family. It isn't giving anything away to say he gets his man, with the help of a female pickpocket who turns out to be a Chinese martial arts champion. The film is so fragmented, so concerned to ring the changes on the fights (on a moving train and in a river) that any suspense involved in the tale is dissipated. The fact that nothing of interest is made of some promising scenes - a fight on a beach with a background of towering waves, the appearance of a character playing a flute and wearing a basket on his head - suggest that the film may have been tampered with.