In 1978, Sammo Hung was only twenty-six years old, but he was already considered one of Hong Kong's best action/stunt co-ordinators, with over thirty entries under his belt. The previous year saw Sammo step into the director's chair for the first time with The Iron Fisted Monk. That film and his followup, Enter the Fat Dragon, made enough at the box office that the Golden Harvest studio gave Sammo more freedom with his third effort, Warriors Two, which is a loose retelling of stories surrounding some of the first real-life proponents of the Wing Chun style of kung fu.

Sammo also stars in the film as Chun, a student of the doctor and Wing Chun practitioner (and later folk hero) Leung Tsan, who is played here by Leung Kar-Yan, seen here without the trademark facial hair which earned him the nickname "Beardy". Tsan, along with the rest of the populace of the village of Foshan, becomes a target of Mo (Fung Hak-On), a thief with a plot to take over Foshan using the disguise of being a friendly banker. One of Mo's tellers, Wah (Casanova Wong), overhears the nefarious plans and attempts to warn the mayor, but is brutally hurt by Mo's henchmen. Recovering in Tsan's clinic, Wah begins to learn the Wing Chun style in order to save the day.

Even with only two other films in the director's chair, Sammo was already showing that he had what it took to be a successful director. Matters were helped here with the financial aid of the Golden Harvest studio, who allowed Sammo and his crew to go out and study Wing Chun for months before shooting started, something that the notoriously stingy Shaw Brothers probably would have never allowed. The intense preparation results in a very fine representation of the martial art, one that delves into the philosophy and reasoning behind the strikes without losing the viewer.

As good as most aspects of the film are, especially when it comes to the onscreen display of Wing Chun battles, Sammo does go through a couple of mis-steps here as a director. Most notably, there is some comedy that feels out of place. The mixing of kung fu and comedy was a popular take on the martial arts picture at this point in time, after the success of films like Snake in the Eagle's Shadow had paved the way. It was a canny method for martial arts film-makers to break free of the conventions that the movies of Bruce Lee placed on the genre. Here, the comedy in the beginning (through Sammo's character) is fine, if not exactly hilarious, but the emphasis brought on during the finale, with a fight between Sammo and Dean Shek, takes away a lot of momentum and dramatic tension the movie had built up to that point, marring what is otherwise a solid old-school kung fu movie.

RATING: 7.5