Sept guerriers

Being a big fan of Tsui Hark films, I had been looking forward to this film for a long time, and even though Leon Lai is in the movie, I still thought it would be watchable.

The film was shot quite beautifully, with certain scenes showing some fantastic imagery. However, do not take this to mean that the film was full of beautiful landscapes, no. The way the film was shot was matched fully well with the barren lands that the majority of the scenes take place in.

The music was captivating and suited the moment when you actually noticed it was playing. In my opinion, the typical 'Hero' theme in this film was a perfect mix of cheesiness and just plain, pure brilliance.

The fight scenes were fast and furious, but sometimes, due to the camera work, it was difficult to see what had become of the amazing choreography.

At this particular moment in time, I can only really think of two bad things about the film, the first being pacing and the second being the timeline/editing. The film tends to jump from scene to scene fairly well, but there were certain moments where it is obvious that something was missing, be it dialogue or scenes, and this made the pacing factor unbearable as it seemed forever for the film to get anywhere.

Overall though, I guess if you like wuxia movies, then this might appeal to you, but I still feel quite doubtful that this would actually appeal to a larger audience.

The swords are awesome by the way.... ;) Let's hope that they release a better DVD version though...

I agree with the above (or below) reviewer, the film was excellent, i just got home from watching it at the cinema. The characters were great and the story (U NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO IT) is really good, the only issue i had was that it seemed to jump, like say one second the characters are doing one thing and the next there's a whole new bunch of characters and your like- well where in hell did they come from, and sometimes i found links silly, its like scenes were cut our for necessity, but it didn't necessarily aid the film. please watch it and when i comes out on DVD no doubt it'll have a bunch of deleted scenes, but its really worth seeing. I went with my Nan and even she enjoyed it. Now what does that say!?

Tsui Hark's 'Chat Gim' is visually wonderful. The breathtaking and landscape, the beautiful set design and colourful frame, the brilliant composition of images, the mesmerizing cinematography and skilled editing superbly come together. Hark parallel's good vs evil and beautiful vs awful very well. He clearly takes his inspiration from the masterworks of Kurosawa (even though this film is an adaptation) and, in my opinion, produces something better than the likes of Ang Lee's overrated 'Wo Hu Cang Long'.

The only minor drawback, I'd say, is that the story is not anything new and it is not as impactive as Kurosawa's work. Then again, Hark manages to bring his own style and give it a unique presentation and 'Chat Gim' by no means is pretentious piece of work. The subplots fit well together and the characters are interesting. Perhaps a few could have been further developed? However, the actors do an adequate job. The fight scenes are not too many but they're appropriately set within the context of the story. They are very well choreographed and do not look over the top as is the case in many films ('Wo Hu Cang Long' being an example of such). Unlike other films of this genre, this one is very human.

It's a bit funny how I got hold of the DVD. My brother owned it and I was teasing him that I'll take the DVD and keep it (he gets very irritated when I do that) and to my surprise he told me that I can have it. Now I'm glad I get to keep the film. Hark put a lot of heart in the making of this beautiful film. It's certainly one of the better films from the Wuxia genre (one of the best I've seen so far). It's not only visually pleasing, it has a heart of gold :).

With this film, the Asians seem to have reclaimed the "Seven Samurai" plot line but here the seven are somewhat haphazardly chosen (since the skill lies not with the person itself but the particular sword he or she brandishes, hence the title). However, by concentrating on the romantic complications in which a few of the main characters become embroiled, some of the warriors are kept too much in the background…but the leader of the seven is as unassuming as Takashi Shimura had been in SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), while the chief villain is flamboyantly played in the manner of Eli Wallach from THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)! There is no denying the fact that its mainstay are the epic scope of the production itself (highlighting the meticulous period detail) and the elaborate action sequences which, thankfully, are rarely implausible - as most actioners from Asia (even the more critically lauded ones) tended to be of late! Apparently, the film (which runs for more than 2½ hours) was trimmed down from an even longer version; though the IMDb doesn't mention this, a Maltese friend of mine who's a veritable Asian-film nut assured me of it…and, in fact, the narrative did feel kind of choppy to me!

The movie started out strong although it was far from "The Seven Samurai", which I believe it intends to emulate. In the first half, I found myself caring about the characters and the non-stop action was exciting. Nevertheless, in the second half, the script started meandering in a number of nonsensical directions and the ending was somewhat ridiculous. Nonsensical is a relative term given that the film was fable like and thus once it stopped making sense it really stopped making sense.

Overall, I recommend the movie since it exceeded my expectations. It's popcorn with good character development tacked on at the beginning and So-yeon Kim is eye candy throughout the film. However, anticipate to find yourself somewhat disappointed towards the end.