Review for Return of the 18 Bronzemen

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Introduction

When the Emperor dies, all eyes turn to the will to see which of his sons will inherit the throne. But the fourth prince gets his hands on the will first, and with the aid of an unscrupulous minister, alters the text. The next step is to eliminate the one person who could unmask the deception, the scribe that wrote the will, and in the process frame the genuine heir for the crime. That accomplished, the fourth prince should be sitting pretty on the throne, but then news comes of a likely rebellion in Henan by the Shaolin Temple. But rather than put down the rebellion, the fourth prince has the idea of attending the temple incognito, learning Shaolin kung-fu, and becoming the strongest in the empire. Getting accepted as an acolyte is hard enough, but to graduate the temple, he’ll have the face the 18 Bronzemen and succeed.

Presentation

Return of the 18 Bronzemen gets a 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p transfer, with the choice between PCM 1.0 mono Mandarin and English, with subtitles and signs. The film comes up a treat on this disc, the image is clear and sharp, and with excellent detail. Other than a strange black blob in one corner of the screen for a minute or so, this is one of the more lavish presentations in this collection, with some great costumes and settings. The audio is adequate, the dialogue clear and the action coming across well enough, but once again I did find the mono track a little harsh at higher volumes, no doubt a sign of its vintage. The subtitles are accurately timed and are free of typos.

Extras

The film once again gets an audio commentary, this time from Frank Djeng and John Charles.

Conclusion

On the surface, this film could have been the mirror of 18 Bronzemen. The setting is the same, a Shaolin Temple where acolytes go through serious, and potentially life-long kung-fu training. The only way to graduate is to take the tests of the 18 Bronzemen, a series of deadly challenges which must be defeated to be able to leave the temple. What is different is that the first film followed a survivor of a Qing purge, an orphan from a noble family massacred by the rulers, who with an exhortation to get revenge, was sent to the Shaolin temple to grow up and train up as well.


Return of the 18 Bronzemen takes a different tack, making the villain of the piece ostensibly the protagonist. The fourth prince is willing to commit murder to ascend to the Qing throne, and once there, he decides that he should be a Shaolin kung-fu master to be the strongest emperor of them all. So instead of dealing with a suspected rebellion by the Shaolin Temple, he decides to attend incognito to learn their kung-fu. He’s a quick learner, but impatient too, so he gets sneaky to accelerate his learning, and winds up facing the 18 Bronzemen on more than one occasion with the hope of graduating within 3 years.


It’s not a direct sequel to the first 18 Bronzemen, but as a thematic mirror to the first film, Return of the 18 Bronzemen could have been an interesting direction, but in execution, it’s an absolute mess of a film. This is a film which builds up several plot points, and introduces and develops quite a few characters, and completely forgets them all. There’s the way the fourth prince frames the fourteenth prince for the assassination of a noble, although he gets a temporary reprieve from execution while a trial takes place. The fourth prince then meets and is attracted to a woman, and simultaneously alienates her Shaolin graduate brother, and has a confrontation with a kung-fu woman disguised as a man in a restaurant. And most of this is forgotten by the end of the film.


The film goes full-on with the 18 Bronzemen section of the film, practically half of the runtime, and even more so than the training, and then the film just stops. There’s no satisfaction, no denouement; you’re left wondering what just happened as the end credits roll. Really, Return of the 18 Bronzemen just feels like the prelude to a story, just the prologue, and you hope that there will be something else will turn up that picks up those dropped plot threads, and actually continues and concludes the story. The only saving grace to the film is the quality of the action, which is probably the best in all of the films in this collection. But as a feature film, it’s really quite disappointing.


On the surface, this film could have been the mirror of 18 Bronzemen. The setting is the same, a Shaolin Temple where acolytes go through serious, and potentially life-long kung-fu training. The only way to graduate is to take the tests of the 18 Bronzemen, a series of deadly challenges which must be defeated to be able to leave the temple. What is different is that the first film followed a survivor of a Qing purge, an orphan from a noble family massacred by the rulers, who with an exhortation to get revenge, was sent to the Shaolin temple to grow up and train up as well.


Return of the 18 Bronzemen takes a different tack, making the villain of the piece ostensibly the protagonist. The fourth prince is willing to commit murder to ascend to the Qing throne, and once there, he decides that he should be a Shaolin kung-fu master to be the strongest emperor of them all. So instead of dealing with a suspected rebellion by the Shaolin Temple, he decides to attend incognito to learn their kung-fu. He’s a quick learner, but impatient too, so he gets sneaky to accelerate his learning, and winds up facing the 18 Bronzemen on more than one occasion with the hope of graduating within 3 years.


It’s not a direct sequel to the first 18 Bronzemen, but as a thematic mirror to the first film, Return of the 18 Bronzemen could have been an interesting direction, but in execution, it’s an absolute mess of a film. This is a film which builds up several plot points, and introduces and develops quite a few characters, and completely forgets them all. There’s the way the fourth prince frames the fourteenth prince for the assassination of a noble, although he gets a temporary reprieve from execution while a trial takes place. The fourth prince then meets and is attracted to a woman, and simultaneously alienates her Shaolin graduate brother, and has a confrontation with a kung-fu woman disguised as a man in a restaurant. And most of this is forgotten by the end of the film.


The film goes full-on with the 18 Bronzemen section of the film, practically half of the runtime, and even more so than the training, and then the film just stops. There’s no satisfaction, no denouement; you’re left wondering what just happened as the end credits roll. Really, Return of the 18 Bronzemen just feels like the prelude to a story, just the prologue, and you hope that there will be something else will turn up that picks up those dropped plot threads, and actually continues and concludes the story. The only saving grace to the film is the quality of the action, which is probably the best in all of the films in this collection. But as a feature film, it’s really quite disappointing.

4/10

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