Die Macht des Schwertes

Had Butterfly and Sword had anything even remotely resembling a comprehensible plot, I would have no hesitation in awarding it 9 out of 10. There is loads to enjoy in this totally bonkers Wuxia tale; the cast is great and the martial arts set-pieces are completely mad. Unfortunately, from start to finish, I had absolutely no idea who was who, what was happening or why.

However lousy at telling a story it may be, Butterfly and Sword succeeds magnificently in presenting some of the craziest action ever seen on screen. In true Wuxia fashion, every character has the ability to fly, spin acrobatically through the air during fights, and survive all manner of blows that would be fatal to you or I; however, the protagonists in this movie go even further—one guy is even able to launch himself like an arrow, blasting his way straight through the enemy.

The volume of cartoon-style gore on show is also pretty impressive. Loads of baddies get hacked, beheaded and generally mutilated during the fights and in the obligatory bamboo forest scene, pretty much all of the enemy end up impaled on bamboo stalks! If as much time and effort had been spent on the narrative as on the creative martial arts choreography, Butterfly and Sword would be an almost perfect piece of entertainment. As it is, I can't bring myself to give this any more than 6 out of 10.

I found this movie slightly disappointing.

It seems there are several different strains of HK Action Flicks. Jackie Chan does pure fist/leg martial arts with no wires. Jet Li tends to use more wires, but "Once Upon a Time in China" seemed to be more dependent on the action than the wires. This move depends so much on wires and magic powers that you really don't get very much in the way of good swordplay and kung-fu. It seemed pretty cheesy from the beginning, and I left it on only because I had nothing better to do. Then it started getting good. The plot gets pretty complicated, as you see hidden motivations and conflicting desires causing problems for the characters. Unfortunately, the movie never really capitalizes on some of the things the characters discover, and the ending reveals a mystery they really hadn't set up well, forcing the characters to reveal too much in their dialogue, as in, "You see, this was my plan all along! Now I shall kill you!" Not dull, exactly, but it never fulfills the potential of the plot developments to overcome a cheesy approach to martial arts.

A typically over the top, highly kinetic wuxia epic from Hong Kong. This one offers a middling budget and an all-star cast, although it's worth noting that story-wise it's much better when detailing larger-than-life characters than it is bringing to life the complexities of a muddled political script. In essence what you get are a number of main characters interacting and occasionally doing battle with some rival factions who have murder in mind.

Part of the film is an ultra-cheesy romance between Tony Leung and Joey Wang, which is quite fun with a lot of flying around in the woods and sweet moments. It's surprisingly old fashioned but genre fans will be more interested in the high energy action scenes, of which there are plenty. These possess extremely choppy choreography - so much so that it's hard to see what's going on at times - but make up for it by being inventively violent, with opponents literally exploding in two when struck by power sword strikes.

A lot of fun comes from seeing Michelle Yeoh as a striking femme fatale although she's slightly underutilised here which is no surprise given the amount of characters in the movie. Donnie Yen is also in the film but used even less although I was pleased to see that his character is a typical hard man even at this early stage of his career. Although the budget isn't high, the trappings of the wuxia genre - outlandish costumes, outdoor scenery, effective sets - are handled adroitly. Animal lovers should be aware of the real-life killing of a deer which may be unpalatable for some.

Once again I find people making crazy reviews about how good the action is in this film and how it's the best feature of the film, fight scenes which require 300 different shots and constant camera angle changes is not good. I love wire action and fantasy martial arts but this is dreadful the characters for some reason was the only thing that kept me watching, but they were not so good as to make you care about them.

Some one else said that it doesn't show off the capabilities of some of the actors, I would have to agree as the fight scenes are awful I don't know how people can say that they are good. I know everyone goes on about crouching tiger, hidden dragon and I agree I'm pretty sick of it to but there is a good reason for it just compare it to this film. The story line is fully explained you don't get a random scene and wonder what the hell is going on, you don't have to watch it 3 times to get a good understanding of whats going on and much of the fight scenes are not just constant changes in camera angles, the fight scenes are easy to follow no one wants to watch a fight scene made up of bits and pieces of different footage. I realise there is a big difference in budget but even the parts of the fight scenes when people are not flying around and are standing in one place, fighting is still just rapid changes in camera shots. There is one part near the end where they actually speed up the action so much it just looks fake and cheap. Once again as I have said before try and watch this film some other way than buying it so that you know what your getting yourself into if you do decide to buy even if it only costs £5.99 like my dvd did it's still not worth the money except for a good laugh at the film and those who rate this film highly on this site.

I own this movie on DVD, have watched it several times, and still wouldn't even attempt to give a more in depth plot summary than "There are political factions. They seem to want something. They kill lots of people."

Who knows what this flick is about.

But with the glorious Michelle Yeoh looking especially radiantly beautiful and ripping heads out at the root through the unadulterated power of her fabulous costumes, who cares? Add in the always charming, greatly lamented Tony Leung as her innocuous-secret-identity-guy brother, a plot would almost get in the way.

If you can embrace the sacrifice of story in favor of pure action and character development in favor of raw screen power, you will have a great time watching this movie.