Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Leofwine_draca KILLER CONSTABLE is a Shaw Brothers martial arts outing that offers something a little different for the seasoned fan. For a change, it wasn't directed by Chor Yuen or Chang Cheh, but rather Kuei Chih-Hung, who made his mark directing a number of supernatural epics for the studio, most notably HEX. This is a dark and downbeat story about an imperial policeman's job to hunt down gold which was stolen from the treasury.This film is a vehicle for the excellent and underrated Chen Kuan Tai, who makes for a fantastically brooding hero. The story is rather ordinary, but this is a visual experience in which the emphasis is on what's on screen rather than the intricacies of the narrative. Chih-Hung is careful to supply excellent framing shots and shoots a lot of his action in dark or dreary conditions, giving this a look of doom that reminded me of Bergman and Kurosawa in places.Given that this is a martial arts production, there's plenty of action here, and it's of a very good quality. It's also incessantly gruesome and nihilistic, even more so than in a Chang Cheh film. Wounds are show in excruciating close-up detail and there's always some novel way to destroy the human body. The choreography is excellent and the performers are all up to the job, including such reliables as Jason Pai Piao, Dick Wei, Yuen Wah, and in particular Ku Feng who has a really meaty role. Things build to an incredible climax which has to be seen to be believed. KILLER CONSTABLE is a stark and shocking surprise and a highlight of Shaw's 1980s output.

Ben Clark Brilliantly shot, competently edited. Incredibly gritty and "unclean" compared to other very stylish and smooth martial arts films. I mean this in a good way, something feels very raw and pure about this movie. Plus an interesting and flawed main character and bad-guys who aren't inherently evil, something you NEVER see from this genre. Probably one of the gorier martial-arts movies from this genre, if not the most brutal, but it isn't over done like some martial-arts movies today are. Decapitation is used sparingly, and when it happens it takes you off-guard. The best scenes are during the night, and the lighting here is astounding, the director uses the dark to the advantage of the fighting, and it creates a very interesting dynamic. In fact every fight that takes place has some sort of element to it.I would have to take off 2 star though, the fighting choreography isn't as well done as many other classic martial arts films, and that is one of the main strong points of the genre. The other reason is that this movie would have been better if it had been extended. We have an interesting character, and an interesting plot.If the movie was extended by perhaps 30 or so minutes to expand on some character and story elements it would be maybe one of the greatest martial-arts film of this kind.While this came out in 1980, which isn't exactly the golden era for movies like this, I think you will be hard-pressed to find a single movie of the genre as good and mature as this one. It's a perfect blend of the good Chinese elements of filmmaking and some western-influenced techniques.

Manulimainen Manuli At times you get positively surprised, when you look forward to a film and expect to see some quality work, and you get what you seek out but in a very different way than you thought, and possibly even more. This was the case when I popped Killer Constable into my DVD player and got way more than your regular Shaw Kung Fu hour-and-a-half epistle. Compared to other Shaw Brother's period Wu Xia and Kung Fu works, Killer Constable differs from the lot quite a bit, and in a very positive way. Director Kuei Chih-hung's background in crime films really show, as he takes interesting elements from hard-boiled crime films and Japanese samurai films, among others, and bring them seamlessly into the Wu Xia movie. It's more than rare in these films to see the protagonists being as a part of the Manchu dynasty's government. This is probably the main reason why we have such a dark character as the main protagonist. Chen Kuan-tai as the Killer Constable himself is a dark type of hero, bordering the anti-hero nearly all of the time. Along in his company of ever-vigilant law-officers, there's no place for your typical sleek-cheeked do-gooders in the posse, as we soon see, when this group of tough law officers go for their mission to capture and punish the bandit who's responsible for stealing a large sum of Emperor's gold. Also, a bit striking are some features you can see in the villains of the movie, some of them who have unusually humane characteristics, giving less stereotypical image of the characters than your usual black-and-white Good vs. Bad composition found in many of the genre pieces.While always being a solid actor and great martial artist - one of my very favourite Shaw Bros. stars - Chen Kuan-Tai really shines in his role. He has the powerful presence and charisma as the stone faced law officer who discovers that he is only a tool and gets betrayed by the system he has abidingly served, that the role gets nearly immortalized. Beautiful use of lighting and scenery, tight script, good balance of action and story, and especially interesting main character make this one the winner all the way. I also have to dish out some bonus points for the very bleak ending shot that somehow emphasized the futility of it all and concretely showed what kind of destruction greed, corruption and following orders without any questioning can lead you to. (This last one may very well be only my interpretation more than the message that was intendedly embedded in the film, but that's how I felt when the last images hit the screen.)The blend of these elements make Killer Constable very atmospheric and exceptionally dark piece of martial arts mayhem, guaranteed to satisfy the genre fans and most probably being an interesting piece also for the people who are not familiar with the genre. Definitely one of my all-time Shaw favourites!This is my truth. What is yours?

bloodshed666 I remember watching this movie as a kid and being quite impressed because I found it so bloody. I often remembered this movie and so I was really happy to find this now in a second hand video store after all those years. Of course I'm not that impressed nowadays - but it's still a very cool swordsplay-movie. I has a lot of great fights with some splatter pleasure like extremities being chopped off. Ohh, and it's no kung-fu- or karate-movie, don't know why they named it "Karate Exterminators" or "Lightning Kung Fu", maybe this was more popular at it's release-date. My german video-release is called "Der gnadenlose Vollstrecker" which is a title that totally fits. Really outstanding is the atmosphere. You have fights in pitch black, in the water and marsh, with fire and so on. And there is a lot of rain. You know, rainy, dark atmosphere, desperate and already injured heroes with long wet hair in the face standing counterpart ready to die. - Cool! And the hero is no real hero because he's a total cold-hearted, bougeois executioner. But there's some development with his character during the story which is quite realistic. And the end is very surprising and radical. So, the movie-makers are not just martial-arts- and swordsplay-professionals, they also knew how to develop a storyline and built some great atmosphere. For me this movie is a hidden treasure of all those kung-fu and swordsplay-movies of the 70ies & 80ies. 7 out of 10.