Starring Vincent Zhao, Zhou Xun, and Andy On. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Rating not available.

If stretches of True Legend leave you with the weird feeling you’ve somehow seen it all before, that’s because you probably have. Director Yuen Woo-ping has spent the past decade or so choreographing some of the most eye-popping fight scenes in modern cinema, with his CV including The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films.

This wildly uneven but fantastically over-the-top epic finds the Hong Kong action legend returning to the director’s chair after a 15-year absence.

Nitpickers will find plenty of problems with True Legend, starting with the fact that things pull a bizarre U-turn halfway through, disjointedly making for two movies in one. As for the rest of us, the overadrenalized action sequences thrill to the point where you’ll want to enroll in a wushu class, suture stamped black-gold body armour to your chest, and get to work mastering the fabled martial-arts technique known as the drunken fist.

Mixing gravity-defying battle scenes with soft-focus romantic interludes and stunning aerial shots of mystical mountain retreats, the film updates Chinese folk hero Beggar Su for the ADHD nation. Vincent Zhao stars as the often drunk Su Can, a retired general in the late 1800s who ends up having to do battle with his disgruntled stepbrother Yuan Lie (Andy On, who’s a corpse-white cross between Yul Brynner and Nosferatu).

Although there are heartfelt messages about the importance of family and the evils of alcohol, it’s the mind-bending fight sequences that—in managing to be both brutal and poetic—provide the money shots for True Legend. Incredibly, given all he’s done, Yuen even brings something new to the table. If you thought the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique was cool in Kill Bill Vol. 2, just wait until True Legend kicks your ass with its Five Venom Fists trick.

Watch the trailer for True Legend.