Overview: BE CAREFUL: no-one’s safe as long as the evil kung-fu masters of the Qi Sha clan terrorise the land. Can they be stopped? The authorities have placed a spy in their ranks, but the clan - and their mysterious, unknown leader - won’t go down without a fight or six!

Barely pausing to catch its breath between brawls, To Kill A Mastermind was produced by Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers studio and features the astounding acrobatics and mind-blowing martial arts skills that make their films so special.

Long unavailable, and famously difficult to see, 88 Films are proud to present this essential rediscovery in a beautiful new Blu-ray edition.

Blu-ray Verdict: To be honest, this kind of feels like Masked Avengers without the masks. A bunch of randos try to take on a group of eight assholes. The rando’s go down. The assholes go down. Who is an asshole? Who is a rando? Sometimes the assholes are secret rando’s. Sometimes not. The assholes often team up on other assholes. Everyone dies screaming and in agony though, of that you can be assured!

Shaw Bros films are a litany of hatred and vile abuse. Life is colorful until you lie down on the cardboard stones, red paint seeping from the bruises of your sundered carcass. You look down upon the ruinous remnants of what was once your proud flesh, and weep.

No matter how righteous, how kind, how loving one may be, strength is all that matters here. Without it, gruesome death is assured. There is no surviving the crucible of a Shaw Bros film, not intact.

Weirdly, the lead characters come into focus only in the final five minutes of the film, the other similarly faceless hordes gradually reduced to a red mountain of corpses. And that is because besides the titular Mastermind, there are no characters, only slayers and the slain.

And so, as you can see, To Kill A Mastermind, despite its title, is more of an action-oriented wuxia film with unique characters playing the assassins and stylishly choreographed weapon fights than a complex, plot-driven one.

Thus, in closing, if you have seen and liked Sun Chung’s other action-oriented Shaw Brothers wuxia films, you’ll likely enjoy this too!

The Martial World is indeed a treacherous place, my dear friends, and this movie is a prime time example of just that.

Bonus Features:
High Definition (1080p) Presentation in 2.35:1 Aspect Ratio
Original Mandarin Audio

Official Purchase Link