Overview: Years before Shaw Brothers’ kung fu films made them the biggest film studio in Hong Kong, local audiences flocked to their wuxia pian films: mythic tales of swordfighting (and often gravity-defying) heroes fighting for honor.

In his final film for the studio, Come Drink With Me, director King Hu (A Touch of Zen) broke fresh new ground in martial arts storytelling, and catapulted fresh-faced lead actress Cheng Pei-pei to stardom in the process.

When the Governor’s son is taken hostage by bandits, a mysterious swordsman named Golden Swallow (Cheng) is hot on their trail to ensure the son’s release. What the bandits don’t realize, however, is that Golden Swallow is actually a woman, and that the hostage is her brother.

Determined to set him free, no matter how many goons she has to fight her way through in doing so, she is aided in her quest by a drunken beggar (Yueh Hua) who may have a closer connection to the bandits’ leader than he initially lets on.

Decades before Ang Lee brought the wuxia genre to international attention with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (in which Cheng played the villainous Jade Fox), King Hu set the original template in what is still considered one of Shaw Brothers’ greatest and most influential action masterpieces.

Blu-ray Verdict: This movie is quite surprising, considering the time period it got made in. You have to realize that there wasn’t really such a thing as the action genre yet at the time, at least not in the way we now know it.

In that regard this movie really feels ahead of its time and perhaps can even be seen as a trend-setter. It’s a Kung Fu flick, featuring lots of sword fights and all kinds of adventurous aspects. This is a genre that truly became popular much later, in the ’70s.

It’s also a movie that goes very over-the-top with all of its action. It’s almost done in a cartoon-like kind of way. Quite ridicules to see at times but also at the same time it’s what giving the movie its style and helps to make it the entertaining movie that it is.

It’s truly a movie that thrives on its action moments. You obviously shouldn’t watch this for its story, that is kind of simplistic and formulaic in the first place. It’s the action that makes the movie entertaining and luckily the action never disappoints neither.

All of the sword fights are quite spectacularly done, though you should all take it with a big grain of salt really, since it’s all obviously something that could never happen in real life.

But it’s not just the way things got choreographed but also really the way it got shot. That to me was the biggest surprise; how dynamically the movie got shot. It features some great camera work, as well as some nimble editing that make the movie fast paced and often spectacular to look at. It feels and looks like a true action movie, even still now days.

It’s also quite surprising to see a female playing the main lead and hero of the movie. She’s the one who does the most fighting and has some of the most impressive skills. She puts a lot of the male characters to shame in this one and also apparently became popular enough to spawn a sequel after.

Simply put, Come Drink With Me is great entertainment and a wondrous accomplishment of a movie, especially considering that this movie is from the earliest days of the Hong Kong martial arts genre. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.37:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
Uncompressed Mandarin and English original mono audio
Optional English subtitles, plus English hard-of-hearing subtitles for the English dub
Brand new audio commentary by film critic and historian Tony Rayns
Interview with star Cheng Pei-pei, filmed by Frédéric Ambroisine in 2003
Interview with star Yueh Hua, filmed by Frédéric Ambroisine in 2007
Interview with star Chen Hung-lieh, filmed by Frédéric Ambroisine in 2003
Talk Story with Cheng Pei-pei, a 2016 Q&A at the University of Hawaii moderated by George Chun Han Wang
Cinema Hong Kong: Swordfighting, a documentary on the history of the wuxia genre and Shaw Brothers’ contributions to it, produced by Celestial Pictures in 2003 and featuring interviews with Cheng Pei-pei, Gordon Liu, Lau Kar-leung, John Woo, Sammo Hung, Kara Hui, David Chiang and others
Original theatrical trailer, plus trailer for the sequel Golden Swallow
Image gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
+ FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anne Billson, and a 2010 essay by George Chun Han Wang about the relationship between director King Hu and producer Run Run Shaw