Meister des Schwertes

The above title will make no sense to you until you see this wildly entertaining movie. There's no point in summarizing the plot, since it's so convoluted that it's futile to try to follow it. The film takes place in the past, and involves a scroll which describes how to obtain secret powers. Not surprisingly, various martial arts clans vie for its ownership. This sets up various great martial arts sequences, cheesy jokes, and the codesong (as opposed to codeword) which will get stuck in your head no matter how much you try to fight it.

Besides the fact that it's just plain fun, I appreciated the fact that the film includes several strong female characters. It would be great if Hollywood could learn from this and other martial arts films that women who can kick serious butt can still be feminine and smart.

If you enjoy this film, check out its sequel (Swordsman II), and also check out "The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk," with Jet Li. You'll enjoy them as well.

Since Swordsman 2 is one of my favorites, I was delighted to find part one finally released on DVD. It is nearly as good, even better in some ways.

If you have not seen either, start with this one and get ready to enjoy 4 hours of primo wuxia.

Too bad that the cast completely changed between the 2 films (except for the excellent Fennie Yuen as Blue Phoenix) Most of the players in part one are as good, and I even preferred Cheung Man as Chief Ying to Rosamund Kwan who takes over in part two. I do think Jet Li in 2 is far better than Sam Hui in this one. Jet copies Sam Hui's style and character well, but is far more athletic and intense which really helps the action scenes in part 2. Sam sings well at least, which is important considering how much singing of "Hero of heroes" there is in part one!

A note about the cast list above: Michelle Reis and Rosamund Kwan are NOT in this film. Kiddo is played by Cecilia Yip and Ying by Cheung Man.

A classic pair of films then. Too bad part 3, "The East is Red" was such a letdown. The first two films stand on their own though, so no real loss.

One warning, if you are new to wuxia or Hong Kong films in general you may find the action in these films often too fast and incomprehensible. Repeated viewing will accustom you to the pacing, as well as allowing you to savor all the rich density of the storyline and its numerous characters.

Swordsman was so popular in Hong Kong that it sprang two other sequels, which starred Jet Li. I consider this film to be a classic which started the whole "flying people martial art" movement in the 90's.

The movie is about a sacred scroll stolen from the vault of the emperor's palace. Different groups of people wanted to get their hands on the scroll, from the master of the Wan San school, to the Eunuches. Along the way, there are a lot of fighting, a lot of singing, comic relief, even an irony of how the most powerful martial art is no match against modern weapons (In Swordsman III - the east is red, this would have reversed, culminating in the quote "You have science, I have mysterious kung fu, your science is s**t")

The movie does not take itself too seriously. One of the best kung-fu/comedy/flying sword fights combination.

...the plot needs to be tightened up a bit.

The first in Tsui Hark's Swordsman trilogy of movies adapted from a book or series of books (I'm not sure which) suffers from a wandering plotlines that seem to go nowhere. Interesting characters appear briefly to show off, then suddenly drop out of the plotline. In other movie adaptations, this happens in an effort to stay true to the book, but I, being chinese illiterate, can't tell you whether that's true for this series.

Despite the scattered presentation, the thrust of the plot seems to have a strong overall direction, perhaps thanks to the novel(s). The bad guys are well established as both evil and deadly. A few stereotypes are thrown into the mix. Not many people in the American audience "got" the female voiceover for the eunuch. A theme of betrayal is used effectively.

The martial arts work is good! Characters magically fly through the air and attack each other with kinetic ferocity. They destroy various objects wit h invisible forces from their palms or flicks(!) with ease thanks to slick editing and some simple effects. The effects fly at you so fast that it all seems believable. Yet Swordsman I is only a preview of a more masterful use of this stable of effects in Swordsman II.

Main complaint is that Song. Anyone who sees the movie will know the Song I'm talking about! Maybe because of casting Sam Hui, a by-then-aging HK pop star, the Song, gets repeated as a musical number no less than 3 times, including once as a flashback! Perhaps that's why he was replaced in the role by Jet Li in the sequel.

I found the English subtitling to be of the usual poor accuracy.

I bought this for 2 bux at a video store cause i thought it seemed good and it had jet Li in it. but i didn't really think it was a very good film. the story is good and some of the action scenes are pretty cool but some of them are at night and are hard to see. some of them also seem sort of stupid looking when they jump around because it looks unrealistic. it is a good film don't get me wrong but they should've filmed it better. i was a bit bored by it but i didn't really mind it. it's not the best kung fu film i have seen but it's better than some i've seen. you should check it out if you don't mind bad lighting and some bad camera angles (not many though)