First a clarification is mandatory. This is not the Shaw Brothers movie of a very similar title. The information and pictures here on IMDB are accurate but it is very easy to confuse the two. I think the voice over people doing the English dub on this film confused the two movies also.
A woman wants to leave her husband even though she is pregnant because she can't take his cheating. After a quick swordfight she gets her freedom. Next scene she has already given birth and is attended to by a chubby bucktooth woman. She dies after naming her husband and accusing him as the reason for all her problems. Bucktooth is proficient in darts, raises the girl and teaches her martial arts. In her coming of age scene she kills a gang of rapists. She learns the truth from her teacher using "In Vino Veritus".
The English voice overs in this movie are unreliable and create confusion about what is happening and why. First there is the matter of the daughter's revenge. The father did not want the mother to leave and would have continued to provide for the child despite his cheating. That is far short of motivation for killing your father. The rest of the mess comes from characters seeming to have information they never could have known.
Overall I rate this as an average film for the year and genre. The fights are few and so-so but the pace is good and the characters interesting.
Review of Xue ling jian nu
