The Shaolin Temple 4K 1982

For some people it was Bruce Lee at the beginning. For me, it was first of all 'Crouching Tiger', then 'Drunken Master', then 'Forbidden Realm', which was enough to catch the wave and get sucked in. And now 'Shaolin Temple'. In short, as a fan - I'm thrilled.

It wasn't the viewing itself that made me excited in the first place, but the anticipation. The first movie of my idol Jet Li. About martial arts and Shaolin Kung Fu. For two weeks I've been thinking about whether or not to see it. And now, finally.

Oh, come on! I'm done. I'm gonna tell you the story of my fan life without ever getting to the point. So: I will start, perhaps, with the fact that in almost every Asian action movie there is something that I would call subconscious unreality. That is, in any, even in the most serious picture you can find moments and events that would never happen in real life.

And today I can name only two realistic Hong Kong action movies: 'Ip Man' and 'Shaolin Temple'. Because the fights in them were staged obviously without kivlar cables, and the blood looked very natural.

But back to our monks. The plot of 'Shaolin Temple' is uncomplicated (but it is there, which is already a plus). A young slave, hiding in the Shaolin Temple, he studies martial arts, dreaming of defeating a cruel general and avenging his father's death.

The movie, you could say, is built on contradictions. The young man is torn between the desire for revenge and the main Buddhist precept of 'do not kill and torture'. However, in order to defeat the enemy, one must fight him with his own methods. So what will our hero choose?

In a word, a good representative of its genre for the fans.