Heroes of the East

A refreshingly good-natured Lau Kar-leung film built on a clever premise: a Chinese man's arranged marriage to a Japanese martial artist turns into a comedy of styles, and a misunderstanding escalates into a series of duels against visiting Japanese masters, each representing a different discipline. Nobody dies, and honour is satisfied all round.

It is essentially a showcase for the differences between Chinese and Japanese fighting arts, staged with Lau's usual technical rigour and unusual warmth. Gordon Liu stars. One of the most purely enjoyable and least bloody kung fu films of its era.