Eight Diagram Lotus Palm (1987)

Eight Diagram Lotus Palm (1987)
Aka: A Lost Skill
Chinese Title: 八卦蓮花掌
Translation: Eight Diagram Lotus Palm

 

Starring: Zhang Guo-Li, Dong Hui, Lu Jun, Ma Zhen-Bang, Zhang Yi-Ran, Jin Wei-Min, Hong Ming, Woo Yik-Lam, Li Wei, Xiao Jin
Director: Liu Zhong-Ming, Ma Shi-Da
Action Directors: Ma Zheng-Bang, Dong Shi-Ming

 

I came into this one nothing absolutely nothing about it. When I saw early on that the emphasis was going to be on the pa-kua chang (baguazhang) style, I was hoping that this would be the definitive film on the style. I was disappointed, as it turned out to be a kung fu melodrama instead.

The bulk of the story is told in flashback. The story begins when a guy witnesses his son being saved from a tiger by a mysterious man who uses a nifty palm attack. The guy tells his wife/lover/girlfriend about it, who (coincidentally) was a student of the style. The three go into the forest to look for the guy while the girl reminisces about her youth and how she and two other homeless boys were taken in by a pa-kua master who cared for them for a number of years. She fell in love with one of the boys and circumstances ended up separating them. At the end of the film, the mysterious man turns out to be the guy she loved and she dumps the other guy (who was perfectly nice man) for her old lover.

There are only a handful of short fights in the movie. While pa-kua is used in most of the fights, it’s not portrayed in an exciting way, unlike those fights involving the style that Sammo Hung, Yuen Woo-Ping, and Tsui Siu-Ming choreographed during their careers. The choreography is kind of clumsy at times. The most interesting is how the pa-kua practitioners can use their qi in much the same way as a Jedi Master can use the force (eg. pushing people back, throttling people from a distance, etc.). However, those scenes really conflict with the otherwise modern and realistic setting of the film.

Only for the hardest core martial arts fans.