Broken Oath (15) |Home Ents Review

Top-notch action from Angela Mao, the first lady of kung fu cinema. For once, all the elements of a Golden Harvest martial arts production are aligned and work well. 

Orphaned Lotus (Mao) is brought up by Buddhist nuns, but after almost killing several would-be rapists in the woods outside the nunnery, she is cast out. The reason she has a whole lot of hate inside her is that her aristocratic father was murdered by colleagues and her mother fatally compromised. 

Vengeance is in Lotus’ soul – and she teams up with a series of men with similar intentions to pay back the pain. 

Broken Oath is often considered one of Mao’s finest films and it is easy to see why: Lotus stays centre stage despite numerous other characters appearing onscreen; she kicks arse with aplomb throughout the film and when she isn’t kicking and chopping she is whipping a scarf filled with scorpions around her head! 

Director Jeong Chang-Hwa, who also made King Boxer, the first martial arts film to make it big in the West, knows how to keep things tight. Here, he never lets the addition of characters get in the way of the central narrative drive and keeps the pacing fast and furious. As is usual with Golden Harvest productions, there are also interesting location shoots to let the action breathe. 

There are several very nice sequences, including Mao’s deceitful flirting with the man who raped her mother and the final fight between her and seven masked doubles for the biggest, baddest villain. 

Angela Mao may be, in truth, only one of several leading ladies who count for royalty in martial arts cinema, but seeing her tough eyes and frown set just before she lays into scumbags is one of the exquisite pleasures of the genre.