646f9e108c The famous swordsman Hsia Feng gathers five other fighters and rallies the local fishermen to fight off a band of Japanese pirates. As Japanese pirates are raiding up and down the Chinese coast a general gathers together some men and turns the local fishermen into soldiers in order to have them fight back.<br/><br/>Mix of Japanese samurai films and traditional Chinese Martial arts movies is pretty much a non stop action film. Supposedly based on a real incident this film plays like a spaghetti western version of the Seven Samurai relocated to China. (Yes I know how redundant that sounds but if you see the film you&#39;ll know what I mean).After a brief set up the film becomes a series of battlesthe pirates make repeated attempts to attack the fishing village. The action is very well done blending a variety of styles into an almost seamless whole.<br/><br/>The film is hard to discuss beyond that because the brief film (it runs only 95 minutes) is essentially one long set piece. There are no real characters other then the general, the the villagers all blending together and then men they hire more their &quot;quirk&#39;, the guy with all the knives is just a guy with all these knives. One really wish they had taken a couple of more minutes to build some characters instead of just the action.<br/><br/>If you don&#39;t mind just action and want a martial arts film that isn&#39;t run of the mill I&#39;d definitely give this film a try.<br/><br/>(Fellow reviewers here on IMDb mention poor dubbing I&#39;m guessing on a video tape copy and hoped for a good subtitled release. I saw this on a DVDpart of Joy Sales Legendary Collection series where the stunning picture is matched with a poor Chinese Vocal track that seems to be separate from the film. I know that all Chinese films from the period were post dubbed and that there are often two vocal tracks -Mandarin and Cantonese, but which ever one they used here was a poor choice) One of my friends said that the only movie that he disagreed with Des Mangan of SBS was this movie. Obviously my friend did not like this movie, so unfortunately my approach to this movie was slightly tainted. I was also quite tired and slept through the last part of it, but I caught enough of it to know what it was about and to talk about it.<br/><br/>Beach of the War Gods is set in medieval china when Japanese pirates were attacking and capturing cities and moving south along the coast. They sent envoys to a small village and told them to give up 1000 gold or die. The villagers could not pay so attacked and the pirates inflicted a large number of casualties. At that time, a lone wanderer was in the village and challenged and killed the envoys. As such the village was set on a course to go to war with the pirates. The wanderer then goes and recruits a small army and returns to set up a defence of the village. The second half of the movie is one long battle scene where the villagers fight off the pirates.<br/><br/>There is nothing that deep about the movie, other than the old idea that if you force somebody to do something that is impossible for them to do, then they will do what is least expected. Here the villagers had no hope in fighting off the pirates, butthey could not meet the pirates demands, they had to fight or die. It was fortunate that they had a helper, but even then the pirates learnt that they could not force their demands onto people because they can and will fight back. This is a story of an underdog turning on his or her oppressors.<br/><br/>This movie also had a feel of a 1960&#39;s swashbuckling movie. I remember seeing a few of them some years ago and one in particular had a huge battle raging for at least half of the movie. This movie was quite reminiscent of them, and it was that feeling that I liked in the movie. Also the ending was quite well done.
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365 weeks ago