The timeline is when the Sung Dynasty struggles to fight off the
Gums. One side of the government supports the war, while the other
side (bad guys) doesn't.
Gu Hung and Ngok Wah are sworn brothers who wish to
fight for the country. Ngok Wah is a warrior of the century
who is being looked up to by everyone. He wishes to marry the
daughter of the Man household, Lee Lui Lui. But the first, second,
and third older brothers wouldn't permit their marriage; instead,
they want her to wed a powerful governor, Kenneth. On the wedding
day, Lee's fourth older brother helps his sister and Ngok Wah escape. Kenneth gets incredibly upset and he plans to get
revenge for his embarrassment.
Gu Hung hears a bad news that the person he was working for,
who had been pro-war with the Gums, had been killed off. He finds
out that it had all been planned out by Kenneth who wants to gain
power in the government. Gu Hung tracks down one of the assassins
and finds out that the assassin had been from "Si Gum Village."
When the village owner finds out, he forbids anyone to commit
murder. From then on, Si Gum village can only survive by doing
a 'hostage business,' where they retain neutrality among different
clans in 'mo lam' and offer to be held as hostages when some troubles
need to be settled between two clans.
Ngok Wah and Lee Lui Lui are happily wed but they are
being chased after by people that Kenneth sent out. Ngok Wah is greatly wounded by one of the hitmen. When he estimates
how much longer he can live, he decides to write out his lifelong
kung fu skills into what he titled a "Sing Hun Sword Fights."
Gu Hung and Ngok Wah, after discussing that they can't
live in a hideaway any longer, plans to kill Kenneth. Ngok Wah, who was injured very badly, suggests to Gu Hung to kill
him and take his head to Kenneth. Gu Hung, though he refuses at
first, finds that there is no other way and decides to go along
with the play. Thus, the whole 'mo lam' thinks Gu Hung betrayed
and killed his sworn brother. He takes the head to Kenneth after
he disguised himself as a stranger by burning his face. He tries
to assassinate Kenneth in the process but he fails, and Kenneth
orders to execute his family.
Kenneth's men burn Gu Hung's house and he tries to escape with
his family, but his wife is killed. He loses his hope of surviving
and gives his little son, Roger, to his servant played by Lau
Kong, to take care of him. Lau Kong, who escapes with the boy,
accidentally drops the Sing Hun book that had been left to him.
A Taoist named Cho Kwan Ming from Gong Dong Clan coincidentally
picks it up and takes it with him. Thus, Lau Kong and Roger
follow him to Gong Dong Clan and begin their lives there.
 20
years later, Roger (big Wan Fei), now all grown up, is always
treated badly. He is required to clean and run errands, but what
he truly wants is to learn kung fu. His childhood best friend,
Sheren, always provides him comfort and greets him with a smile.
Sheren's dad wants them to get married, but Roger declines, saying
that he is a poor boy with no ability to take care of Sheren.
Roger has been learning kung fu from an unknown man (who is actually
Lau Kong) for a long time, so he has his foundations built up.
An opportunity came to Roger when he hears that the famous clan,
Ho Tin Moon, is coming to Gong Dong to recruit. It was a pure
luck that the little master of Ho Tin Moon, Anthony Wong, noticed
Roger's potentials. Roger wants to go to Ho Tin Moon with Anthony but Lau Kong (who Roger thinks is his real father) furiously
refuses.
A dispute that needs to be settled occurs between Gong Dong and
some other rival clan. The rival clan invites Si Gum villager
to handle the matter, and as a proof that the problem will be
resolved, the rival clan's master hands over a hostage to Cho
Kwan Ming (Gong Dong Clan's master), played by Jimmy. Jimmy is
young but he possesses impressive skills of kung fu. Roger takes
notice of that and when other people in the clan look down on
him for being a villager of Si Gum, he treats him kindly.
One night, Cho Kwan Ming is almost assassinated by a mysterious
man. The hitman gets injured and Roger finds him, and he discovers
that it is Jimmy, who was paid by the rival clan to get rid of
Cho Kwan Ming. Roger hides him in some cave and they befriend
each other.
At this point, Jimmy and Roger make a bet, as to who would succeed
first, since both of their dream is to become famous and successful.
When Jimmy disappears from Gong Dong suddenly, Roger gets suspicious
of his dad, who was the only person who knew of Jimmy's presence.
Roger misunderstands his dad and gets upset and walks out of Gong
Dong to 'find his own life.' Upon Sheren's begging, they go on
a short journey together.
Roger goes to Ho Tin Moon but is treated coldly because he has
no proof of knowing Anthony. He gets extremely upset by this and
decides to go back. On his way back home with Sheren, he encounters
Kitty Lai, in not so good terms because Kitty looks down on Roger
for being kind of idiotic.
Kitty's household (the Man's) is a weapon manufacturer, and in
order to pursue a better sword, Kitty pays a visit to Sheren's
dad, who is a mischievous inventor. Due to Roger's playing around,
Kitty had to beg several times until she could get the sword
fixed.
Lau Kong always waits for an opportunity to steal the Sing Hun
book from Cho Kwan Ming. Cho Kwan Ming, who tries to learn it,
finds it very difficult and dangerous. One fateful night, Roger and Lau Kong have this talk about who Roger's dad really
is and how they came about residing in Gong Dong. After Roger
swears to avenge his father's death, Lau Kong steals the book
and hands it to Roger, but in his route to escape, he jumps
off the cliff. Roger barely escapes but now, he is being chased
after by every greedy man in 'mo lam' for the book of high kung
fu he has.
After a time being, Roger befriends Kitty and she takes him to
Man household and lets him stay there. They fall in love in that
process. Roger helps Kitty get rid of Kenneth's son, Michael To
who harrasses her.
Jimmy, who comes back to kill Cho Kwan Ming, succeeds. Jimmy
and Roger go to seek their hideout in Si Gum village because everyone's
after them now.
Jimmy is a caring brother and a good man, who has potentials
of becoming successful. When Kitty comes to visit Roger
in Si Gum village, Jimmy immediately falls in love with her,
only to discover that she is already Roger's lover. Not wanting
to interfere with his best friend's relationship, he decides to
go on with his life, but a tragedy strikes one night as men from
Ho Tin Moon (one of them was a cousin of Cho Kwan Ming) come to
Si Gum village to avenge Cho Kwan Ming's death. In the process
of this fight, Jimmy's beloved sister and her newly wed husband
are killed off. Jimmy turns bitter from this point on, thinking
nothing but of success.
 Roger
and Jimmy both agree to go to Ho Tin Moon because Roger personally
knows Anthony. Anthony greets them sincerely, while the man who
killed Jimmy's sister hates them. One of the disciples of Ho Tin
Moon wants revenge from Jimmy because Jimmy killed his brother.
Anthony says that if Jimmy can handle 3 strikes (he was injured
at this point) from that man, the revenge shall be completed.
Jimmy handles 2 strikes, but the last strike the disciple was
about to give him was poisonous, so Roger blocks him and gets
poisoned instead. Anthony says that the only way to heal Roger
is to get his father, Yeung Jak Lam. Roger is then healed with
the help of Yeung Jak Lam and he is very impressed by Roger's
character.
Jimmy disciplines himself very hard and proves to be a good worker,
but Ho Tin Moon thinks better of Roger's personality because to
them, Jimmy appears to be heartless and cold.
Roger and Kitty's love develops day by day, but the Man household
and Ho Tin Moon are enemies. Soon, Roger has to decide whether
he would choose loyalty to Ho Tin Moon or love to Kitty. Things
complicate when Anthony's younger sister, Tse Ling comes into
the relationship. Tse Ling likes Roger and would do anything to
get him to herself, even trying to kill innocent Sheren.
 Roger
and Kitty get very alarmed by Tse Ling. But Jimmy sees through
Tse Ling because they have similar personalities. Tse Ling immediately
guesses that Jimmy loves Kitty, so she strikes a deal; that if
he helps her to break Roger and Kitty apart, he would get Kitty.
Jimmy decides to help at first but at the last step, he couldn't
possibly hurt Kitty by breaking her up with her love, so he gives
up.
Jimmy and Roger's friendship apparently seemed strong, but as
Jimmy's ambitions get bigger, he finds himself inferior to Roger.
The fact was, Jimmy had higher potentials but everyone just liked
Roger better, including his love, Kitty. When he confesses to
Kitty his love but gets rejected, he wonders to himself, "What
does Roger have better than me?" Thus, he slowly turns evil
as his inferiority complex blows up.
 Jimmy
and Tse Ling are both angry at Roger. Tse Ling is mad at him because
he rejected getting married to her, even when the higher position
was offered. Jimmy takes notice of this and he sets up a false
play so it would seem that he slept with Tse Ling. They get married,
and Jimmy thinks that he would get a higher position that Yeung
Jak Lam decided to give to his son-in-law. But instead, that very
position goes to Roger. Jimmy and Tse Ling are both mad at this
fact. Jimmy goes to Si Gum village and trains his sworn brothers
so they could be of use in the future. Tse Ling promises Jimmy
to get him power. Jimmy pulls off a plan where he becomes the
spy for Man household, thus making the two households fight. Eventually,
Kitty and Roger stay apart from each other due to their feud.
Jimmy assassinates Yeung Jak Lam and the son from the Man household,
thus making it look as if they killed each other. Ho Tin Moon
and the Man household then go on a huge war, where Ho Tin Moon
kills most of important figures in Man household.
Things go as Jimmy planned. Tse Ling wants to be in charge
of Ho Tin Moon because ever since they were little, her father
only favored her older brother, Anthony.
With Roger's luck, he finds out that both his father (Gu Hung)
and stepdad (Lau Kong) are alive in Gum. Roger and Gu Hung, while
escaping out of Gum, have to bear Lau Kong's death. They come
to Man household to explain that Gu Hung wasn't the one who killed
Ngok Wah (Kitty's dad), and that they have evidence to
prove it to 'mo lam.' But Jimmy and Tse Ling get rid of that evidence
to prevent Roger from being the center of the mo lam. When Kenneth
finds out that Gu Hung's still alive, he comes and kills him off,
and also Kitty's mom, Lee Lui Lui.
Anthony becomes suspicious of who killed his father. Then he
starts to doubt Jimmy. But before he could do anything about it,
Jimmy and Tse Ling attack him and prison him. Jimmy also captures
Roger and threatens Anthony to give Tse Ling the power to be in
charge of Ho Tin Moon. For Roger's safety, Anthony agrees, only
if they let Roger go. Roger escapes and is saved by Sheren and
her dad. The Man household and Roger both decide to get revenge
on Jimmy who changed so evilly. But Roger, who lost all of his
kung fu because of Jimmy, has no way to win because Jimmy also
took the Sing Hun booklet when he captured Roger.
Tse Ling did become powerful but the whole Ho Tin Moon is dominated
by Jimmy's men that he trained from Si Gum village. When Jimmy's convinced that Roger had died because he fell off the
cliff while being chased after, he wants Kitty and shows
her how much he cares for her. Kitty is willing to sacrifice
her virginity in means to get the booklet back. Jimmy wants
to marry Kitty and Tse Ling gets incredibly upset and tells
Jimmy that Kitty just wants to kill him. Jimmy wouldn't
listen to her and eventually, she is jailed as well. In the jail,
she begs her older brother for forgiveness. Kitty successfully
steals the booklet and she sets Anthony and Tse Ling free. When
she gets caught by angry Jimmy, she is raped by him.
Roger practices the booklet and is stronger than anyone else
now. With Anthony, Tse Ling, and everyone else in 'mo lam,' he
decides to bring Jimmy down. Jimmy has partnered up with
Kenneth but he cannot win over Roger, so he escapes to Si Gum
village. While Kenneth and Jimmy both learn the kung fu that
could beat Roger's, Jimmy kills Kenneth off. When he sees
that his sworn brothers of Si Gum village had all been killed
off by Roger and his crew, he gets extremely upset and he captures
Sheren and threatens Roger that he'd kill her unless Roger shows up.
Roger and Jimmy go on a duel, but even with Jimmy's
newly built kung fu, he cannot win over Roger. Jimmy is
thus killed by Roger.
In the end, Roger dreams about Jimmy where they talk about
the old days, when they first met. They had made a bet on who
would become successful first, but everything was over.
Roger then asks Kitty if she would leave with him and wander
around, since he was sick of all this fighting. So they leave
together, leaving their friends (Anthony, Tse Ling, Sheren, Sheren's
dad) behind.
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Naturally when I'm watching a series, I feel more attracted to
'gray' characters - those who start out as protagonists and later
turn into antagonists. There is bound to be a good reason for
such a change in those characters. Many times, that change is
triggered by not the potential villains themselves but one or
two main characters to have the story move to their favor. Generally
speaking, the ending is inevitable for the bad guys who were once
good - they all die for all the 'crimes' they commited.
For a long time, I dreamed of an ending that differed from the
usual 'good guys win, bad guys die.' There were 3 reasons why
I sought for this kind of an outcome in a series: one, in most
cases, bad guys aren't even really that bad. Two, good guys aren't
even really that good, they often come across as inconsiderate
and selfish. Three, life isn't fair, there is no such world of
good guys always winning, and even though TV series might be my
outlet for having impossibilities occur, I wish in some cases
they would reflect some reality.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find a series with such an ending.
I hoped for the same when I first watched 'The War Heroes,' as
I saw how Jimmy's character was gradually turning into a villain.
Nope, it didn't happen, he died and the good ones ended up way
happier than they deserved. This series did succeed in leaving
me a fine impression in this aspect because it provoked my anger
so much.
The series started out with a regular jolly Roger wanting to
become a big hero, encountering people here & there and getting
into some troubles. He meets Jimmy and becomes his best friend,
he meets Kitty and becomes her love, but things start to go wrong
when Jimmy meets Kitty and falls in love with her. Up to this
point, the story sounds pretty traditional.
But the ultimate cause of Jimmy turning bad was not because of
his faltered love, but rather, not being able to execute his ambitions
when he tried so hard. He had already lost so much in his life,
he shouldn't have lost more. Roger, with all the luck he had,
climbed up to the top without having to struggle nearly as much
as Jimmy did. So basically, what I learned was that if I have
a good personality, I'll always get what I want without having
to try.
What totally peeved me in the end was that after gaining everything
and winning, Roger decided to retire because he didn't want anything
he won. If he didn't want anything to begin with, why stop another
from achieving the power and fame he deserves? What did Jimmy
struggle for and why did he get killed then?
My friend Trinh & I were both so bothered by this ending
that we decided to endorse 'our' version of the ending for this
series. You're more than welcome to check out The
Less Maddening Version of 'The War Heroes' Ending written
by Trinh. :)
So that's for the story. As far as the cast goes, I had never
been annoyed with Kitty Lai as much as I was in this series. I'd
even prefer to see her in weak roles than the character she played
here, wreaking havoc everywhere with her rash personality and
being utterly useless except towards the end, being wooed by every
single male character (I don't understand what they saw in her
character). It breaks my heart to say this about Kitty because
she is one of my favorite actresses, but I just couldn't blindly
love her character solely because I like her.
Rather, I liked Tse Ling as a vixen (though she reformed) and
Sheren Tang as a sweet, supportive childhood friend more. I wished
for Roger to pair up with Sheren but that would just kill the
plot right there since it lived off of the getting together process
of Romeo & Juliet throughout the series.
Most annoying characters - Tse Ling's dad, and the woman who
followed him around that I didn't even bother to mention in the
summary. Her character name was Fan Siu Dip (Helen Mah) in case
you're wondering. I'm grateful to Jimmy for killing both of them!
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Roger
Kwok Chun On --- Ling Wan Fei