宦官弄权的明朝末年，苛税与暴政弄得民不聊生。张君宝（李连杰）与董天宝（钱小豪）是一对自幼在少林寺长大的师兄弟，但两人性格迥异，张君宝善良忠厚，董天宝则狡猾阴险，在争夺进入达摩院修行的资格时，两人因与师伯发生争执，被逐出少林。 出寺后，两人因志向渐不同而分道扬镳，董天宝贪图荣华参军，张君宝则与一群仁人志士一起劫富济贫。为求高官，董天宝向大宦官刘瑾出卖大批旧友，一时间血流成河。为替义士报仇，也为帮民除害，张君宝在秋雪（杨紫琼）的帮助下，从其师傅的气功心法中悟出一套武林奇功“太极拳”，开始勤加练习，准备不日与敌手来场血战。
本片中，“牛莲花”的扮演者杨瑞瑞曾获百花奖最佳女主角提名。此后的《刻骨铭心》、《不再流泪的女人》、《红印花》、《春天的热土》等影视作品中，都有着杨瑞瑞清新的身影。本片主演、内蒙古话剧团著名青年演员袁利坚曾在《浴血疆城》中有上佳的表演。片中，“灯亮”这一角色被袁利坚饰演的活灵活现，与杨瑞瑞刻画的“牛女”相映成辉，让人过目难忘。
Two differences between this Austrian version and the generally available American version are immediately obvious they differ both in their length and in the language of the intertitles. The American version is only 1,883 metres long - at 18 frames per second a difference of some 7 minutes to the Austrian version with 2,045 metres. Whereas we originally presumed only a negligible difference, resulting from the varying length of the intertitles, a direct comparison has nevertheless shown that the Austrian version differs from the American version both in the montage and in the duration of individual scenes. Yet how could it happen that the later regional distribution of a canonical US silent film was longer than the original version The prevalent American version of Blind Husbands does not correspond to the version shown at the premiere of 1919. This little-known fact was already published by Richard Koszarski in 1983. The film was re-released by Universal Pictures in 1924, in a version that was 1,365 feet (416 metres) shorter. At 18 frames per second, this amounts to a time difference of 20 minutes! Titles were altered, snippets of action removed and at least one major scene taken out entirely, where von Steuben and Margaret visit a small local chapel. (Koszarski) From the present state of research we can assume that all the known American copies of the film derive from this shortened re-release version, a copy of which Universal donated to the Museum of Modern Art in 1941. According to Koszarski the original negative of the film was destroyed sometime between 1956 and 1961 and has therefore been irretrievably lost. This information casts an interesting light on the Austrian version, which can be dated to the period between the summer of 1921 and the winter of 1922. Furthermore, the copy is some 200 metres longer than the US version of 1924. If one follows the details given by Richard Koszarski and Arthur Lennig, this means that, as far as both its date and its length are concerned, the Austrian version lies almost exactly in the middle between the (lost) version shown at the premiere and the re-released one.A large part of the additional length of the film can be traced to cuts that were made to the 1924 version in almost every shot. Koszarski describes how the beginning and the end of scenes were trimmed, in order to speed up the film. However, more exciting was the discovery that the Austrian version contains shots that are missing in the American one - shotscountershots, intertitles - and furthermore shows differences in its montage (i.e. the placing of the individual shots within a sequence). All this indicates that Die Rache der Berge constitutes the oldest and most completely preserved material of the film.