Yuan yue wan dao

I'm coming to appreciate the martial arts films of director Yuen Chor, who I'm only recently becoming familiar with, although this one isn't one of his better ones. The film follows a young man who becomes obsessed with the titular bladed weapon and begins challenging other fighters in what becomes a standard martial world story. The main downside to this film is that none of the fights are all that interesting or well done. There are acrobatics, but they are nowhere as interesting as say a Cheh Chang Venom Mob fight sequence. However, this film does feature some nice colorful photography on typically good Shaw Brothers sets, which I suppose was enough to hold my interest, even if the rest of the film disappoints.

Another of Yuen Chor's seemingly endless entries in the martial world genre. This one starts with a song singing the praises of the moon and the scimitar. How does this particular film stand up against the many others by Yuen Chor, let's see.

Ding, a young upstart, is quickly moving up in the ranks of the martial world with his invincible "Shooting Star" sword technique. On his way to another duel he is tricked by the wife of his next opponent and his kung fu manual is stolen before the match. His opponent now knows the secret of the Shooting Star sword and defeats him. To add to Ding's humiliation his opponent claims that Ding's father, who taught Ding the technique and now deceased, stole the manual! Ding runs off and about to smash his sword on his father's gravestone when he is flung into a strange world inhabited by fox spirits. Ding meets a beautiful fox woman who carries the title weapon around in a flower basket! The scimitar belonged to her aunt who recently died after pining away for her lover, a kung fu master who inscribed a poem on it. The fox woman, Qing Qing and Ding marry but Qing Qing's father rules that Ding can never return to the real world. Ding is fascinated by the scimitar and can't keep away from it. Qing Qing teaches Ding how to use it and he becomes a master. Ding now feels that he can go back to the real world and avenge himself on his last opponent and restore his father's name.

That's just the set-up. As with other martial world films, there's a ton of plot and intrigue. One of this film's pluses is that we follow one main character for the whole film and only have a few extra characters to get to know. The supernatural angle is a plus. A minus is that Ding is sort of an idiot and does things that make him unsympathetic. Also the plot has a number of giant logic holes that are very apparent and the ending is a cop-out. The action is good for this sort of film with some neat fights.

OK, better if you like the genre.

I love martial arts movies from the golden age 1967 to 1984 and I love Shaw Brothers martial arts movies from that era most of all. Then there is this movie that I disliked as much as liked. I kept asking myself why this movie failed to entertain one of the genre's biggest fans and here are a few reasons.

First concerns the sword fights and this movie is mostly sword fights for action. Sword fights (or rather "good sword fights") are uniquely difficult to choreograph and execute in movies. I practice both martial arts swords and fencing. Fencing rarely works for movies and larger blades were some of the first fights ever filmed. It is easy to use the old "I'll raise my sword and you hit it with yours" technique of movie sword fighting. Just add a clever or unexpected move or a difficult move smoothly executed and you have raised the bar. This movie went the Chinese opera route and added acrobatics. Acrobatics can be a great addition to a fight, just look at most of The Venom's fights. In this movies the acrobatics in the fights was totally overdone to the point of distraction.

Second is the lead character. The lead began as somewhat unlikeable and continued to become more and more unlikeable to the point of being more of a villain than the real villains. In plot structure and scripting and character development this never works.

Finally, Shaw Brothers sets of this era were unbeatable by any other studio. Despite the excellent design, lighting and quality of materials in this movie, something just didn't feel right. I felt as if though what I was looking at was nice, it was too contrived and framed and I always knew that a few inches to the right or left of the frame there was nothing but an empty movie studio set.

I can only rate this movie as five out of ten. I realize most of my comments are purely opinion and based on nothing more so your viewing experience might be contradictory. I still recommend it (but only for only fans of the genre) and I hope you enjoyed it more than I did.

This film follows Ting Ping as he attempts to climb through a martial arts ladder of opponents in an attempt to bring himself out of poverty. While he is an underdog, he has a secret technique his father taught him that is thus far unbeatable. When he is eventually defeated through treachery, he attempts to commit suicide but is instead transported to the world of ghosts while still remaining mortal. He meets Chin Ching a young ghost girl who he quickly falls in love with. The rest of the movie is part romance, part revenge, part morale tale, and sort of boring.

While the film has supernatural elements to the plot, don't expect for that to bleed over into the fights (ala BUDDHA's PALM (1982)). Nor should you expect a martial art movie with crazy weapons or completely ridiculous techniques. The closest you get here is a dual bladed scimitar (think Darth Maul's dual bladed light saber in THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)) which can be used to trip or disarm opponents. In addition to that most of the characters are rather forgettable as they don't come off as anything other then generic. This all results in a series of fights that you will likely forget about soon after the movie ends. I watched the English dub and found it to be adequate but lacking in both exceptional performances as well as amusing dialog. The best line happened after a character stabbed an opponent and leans down to taste some the blood ("It tastes terrible"). Not a flick I'd strongly recommend but you could certainly do worse.

As a fan of Derek Yee and his other starring role in "The Sentimental Swordsman", I entered the film expecting much of the same and to be entertained again with martial arts in a simple magical setting. However, I exited the film with much more than that.

From the start you will notice the film's strengths is in it's superb directing and cinematography, which later evolves to showcase the unmatched set design by the Shaw Brothers studio. The choreography, a satisfying dance to the film's poetic themes and dialogue.

Unfortunately, the other reviewers held their subjective views on the protagonist's character development against the worth of the film, but objectively, you may find similarities with the "The Count of Monte Cristo", and respect the film offering a complex character that has managed to wrestle with your emotions. Like "Monte Cristo", this film is also surprisingly wise and insightful, and I enjoyed its philosophical perspective.

There are stronger overall films within the genre, so I feel comfortable rating this film an 8/10, but that also guarantees a rewatch from me in the future, and a recommendation for you right now.