Reviewed by: MrBooth Date: 03/04/2023 Shot simultaneously with King Hu's masterpiece A TOUCH OF ZEN, with which it shares much of its cast and crew. Sadly it doesn't share King Hu's penmanship. The story is simple, but the script meanders around it making it quite hard to grasp. The film assumes we'll be on the side of the rebels without actually making a case for it... I guess if you lived in Taiwan in the 1970's it wasn't a question. The film does have the visual craftmanship that King Hu's production team were capable, and it looks gorgeous... and there's a big fight at the end so it's certainly not a bad film! (https://the14amazons.co.uk/r35394-The_Grand_Passion) Reviewer Score: 6

Reviewed by: heinz Germany Date: 11/05/2019 Summary: "Memories of "A touch of Zen" Director Yang Shih-Ching has been Production Manager for "A Touch of Zen" later (or even in between?) and this movie has a lot of the same filming locations, well remembered from King Hu's masterpiece. And the top actors (with the exception of Polly Shang-Kuan who maybe replaced Hsu Feng - which seems to be casted first - see promo article picture) were all casted in "ToZ, too. It lacks some of the King Hu's magic, but this movie has fine production values and and enjoyable cast. It's truely one of the few better efforts of taiwanese old-school swordplay-dramas and probably the directors best try (and his first) of the martial-arts genre. Reviewer Score: 8