Ma Ko Po Lo
1975 / 103m - Hong Kong
Action, Adventure
3.0*/5.0*
Marco Polo poster

Watches

January 04, 2016

3.0*/5.0*

It's not often you see a Western character pop up in a Shaw Bros film. China has plenty of local heroes it can celebrate, but apparently they were ready to try something different. The result is negligible. This is just another typical Cheh Chang production, only with a white guy running around in the cast. It's no surprise then this experiment was rather short-lived.

The famous Italian adventurer Marco Polo finds himself in China. There he is recruited by the Chinese government to track down some rebels in the south. Tracking the rebels down is easy enough, but when they face Polo, they persuade him to join their cause instead. The rebels want revenge for the death of one of their friends.

The first third of the film is spent on the setup, the middle part sees the heroes start their training, the final part has them testing their newly acquired skills on the bad guys. The fact that a white dude with a well-known name happens to be amidst all that is just an inconsequential detail. This is solid but predictable martial arts fare, nothing more, nothing less.