The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter

Director: Lau Kar-leung

1984 / 98min / DCP

Made as the declining Shaw Brothers Studio entered its twilight years, Lau’s Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, inspired by Song dynasty folklore, has all the radiant beauty of a spectacular sunset, a showcase for all that the Shaw machine, at the height of its fine-tuned powers, did best. Six of his seven brothers and his general father slaughtered in an ambush by Khitan barbarians, Yang Wu-lang (Gordon Liu) finds asylum at a Buddhist monastery in Mount Wutai, where he practices and develops the eponymous technique, and learns to abjure violence—though his vows of pacifism will be sorely tested when his family’s butchers resurface. “One of the most impressive of [Lau’s] last Shaw works… A somber dissection of the revenge motif… Lau’s sympathy seems largely with the monks who insist, in film after film, that revenge debases the martial arts.” —David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong

Distributor: Celestial Pictures

Part of The Sifu: Lau Kar-leung