As mysterious as it is epic, King Hu's 1971 masterpiece, A Touch of Zen is the ultimate wuxia pian.

| Jul 18, 2023

It seems to me a quite pleasant wuxia film, which reaches its strong touch in the poetic choreography of fights and in its treatise on loyalty, redemption and the rupture of the feminine roles. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 10, 2023

[King Hu] expands upon wuxia’s typical gender roles for women and posits an alternative marked by Zen Buddhism, genre variation, and a scale unseen in wuxia cinema upon the film’s release in 1971.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 18, 2022

King Hu is certainly a remarkable talent who has made a film of immense technical accomplishment while sticking to his last as a commercial direction.

| Aug 2, 2021

An amazing achievement -- intelligent, imaginative, exciting, beautifully designed, though at three hours overlong and at times overblown.

| Aug 2, 2021

The camera takes as much aesthetic pleasure in the quiver of a birch leaf as King Hu does in bringing out the latent values of Zen's "mind over matter" philosophy In marvellously choreographed screen fights.

| Aug 2, 2021

It has an often awesome visual splendor and places King Hu in the front rank of contemporary filmmakers.

| Aug 2, 2021

Stylized slaughter and idyllic scenes of nature get equal time and the photography, matched by effective music, is beautiful, sometimes spectacular, but also voluminous.

| Aug 2, 2021

Meticulously detailed, and suffused, at times, with a real (if totally screwball) sense of wonder... [though] the grandeur of the film is inseparable from its silliness.

| Aug 2, 2021

The flavor is marvelously satisfying. You almost wish the three-hour movie would go on longer.

| Aug 2, 2021

Zen is a visual feast, thin on plot but stuffed with scene after outstanding scene made even more breathtaking by the camera's slow insistence on revealing the sheltered beauty of a flower as well as the stunning sweep of a desert plain.

| Aug 2, 2021

On first viewing it is the battle scenes that stay in the mind; an eye-defying mixture of flashing swords, aerial leaps and whirring limbs, all cut to rhythm as exotic and orderly as ballet. But other riches reveal themselves at a second viewing.

| Aug 2, 2021

The development of the intrigue... is leisurely, certainly; but once underway, the balletic action, impeccable period reconstruction, mise-en-scene and whiplash editing are breathtaking.

| Aug 2, 2021

I found it entertaining, even exhilarating. The first three-quarters of an hour drag a little, but after the bodies have started flying through the air, the remaining two hours fairly flash along.

| Aug 2, 2021

Hu directs a film that stands apart from the plethora of wuxia titles for many reasons, but particularly because the script does not exist to provide a background for the action, but it is elaborately written filled with social and philosophical comments

| Nov 3, 2018

With the first shots of Zen we are plunged into a nature marked by eerie majesty.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 10, 2018

Epic in scope, meditative in tone and exhilarating in execution, A Touch of Zen is a seminal moment in film history.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 17, 2017

King Hu's romantic chivalry adventure is a masterpiece of Chinese cinema, a magnificent epic with grand battles fought with the grace of a ballet with swords, and the most significant cinematic inspiration for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

| Jan 13, 2017

Like the old Buddhist told King Hu: A Touch of Zen is something to be experienced.

| Dec 8, 2016

...pure, ravishing spectacle.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 11, 2016