Swordsman 3

As the 3rd film of the Swordsman trilogy I found that I wondered why they bothered to make it at all; as it did nothing to compliment the first 2 in the trilogy! I have been watching Chinese films, for over 35 years now, and this is top of my worst Chinese films ever made (and that is really saying something when you consider the copious amounts of sheer lying rubbish in propaganda films they put out)! As I do not speak any Chinese whatsoever I had to rely upon English subtitles (all that are available on the internet are absolutely terrible) and, I could find only one translation which was utterly terrible (it was like a broke broken mistranslated gobbledygook); it was not translated by a person who could speak both languages but more likely machine based etc. So it made the film even worse to view.

It continues from where the 2nd film left off (the actors being Brigitte Lin- once again - and the superb Jet Li) but is completely confusing, badly edited and a lousy story-line/script etc. It jumped all over the place with far too much fantasy action thrown in; which was in fact so stupid/bad in its look on the screen. It was like the director and co didn't have a clue what to do with the story, actors roles, action and continuity of the first 2 films. The films of this era (and 20 plus years before) used Hi-wire and off screen equipment - trampolines etc - for special FX; the CGI of the era you could say. The problem is it is vastly overused and looks terrible in every shot! As a long time viewer of Chinese martial Arts films I am used to the special FX used at the time and that's how I know that these were cheap looking and just terrible!

One of the reviewers tries to entice you to watch it by saying that there is a fantastic lesbian love scene...what a click-baiting liar! The scene is between the goddess, Brigitte Lin, and her concubine, Snow (who turns out to be a demon in disguise) who are fully clothed in a scene that lasts about 4 seconds.

I surprised there are so many likes for this film by the reviewers because the film to me played out as though it had been made by a clueless teenager...a young one at that! Its gotten a 1 star from me, only because I have too give it mark of some level, but the only nice thing about this film is looking at the beautiful Brigitte Lin!

This movie picks up where Swordsman II left off: the Magnificent Asia completes the transformation from a mortal man to a woman with incredible magic martial arts powers and continues her ruthless quest for power, revenge and love.

It's almost impossible to follow the plot, but the whole movie is so packed with supernatural action, intrigue, ambition, revenge, and amazing costumes and scenery it doesn't matter. Add English subtitles that are inadvertently hysterically funny and you have a truly bizarre and entertaining movie. Some people will find it boring, and martial arts buffs might be disappointed, but I thought it was a scream.

First disregard all negative comments, written by people who couldn't even follow the story.

This movie is perfect example of movies created during the golden age of Hong Kong. It's an amazing combination of romance, action, comedy and drama and it features beautiful women as deadly fighters. What more could you want? Koo - a Chinese officer risks his life to meet Asia the Invincible (a man turned woman, played by a woman - Brigitte Lin) the greatest fighter alive, who has retired from the world of martial arts. He wants her to stop other "Asia the Invincible" imposter's. She decides to help him at first, then to claim back her lost power. Now Koo has to stop her. But that's not all, there's also a love triangle involving Koo, Asia the Invincible and Snow (a woman pretending to be a man, played by a beautiful woman - Joey Wang).

The action is very over the top, it's unlike anything you've seen before, with people wielding cannons and throwing ships around, killing people with just their chi. There are lots of romantic, even erotic, moments, some of them involving two women, and the end is very dramatic.

Don't miss this great movie!

I wanna rate it 1. but I gave it 5 stars. Only because the soundtrack is great. actually one of the best that year. Sarah Chen sings a great song here (The Mundane World aka Xiao Hong Chen). She sang two theme songs for Hong Kong movies that year. actually both Hark Tsui's movies. this one and Green Snake (Dance of Sunlight aka Liu Guang Fei Wu). both songs are classics. you could still hear the music for these two movies featured in many TV serial nowadays. Brigitte Lin is OK in this movie, and has some memorable scenes. but Rongguang Yu is such a terrible actor, you just wanna hit him on his face~ and the script is really bad, no one could rescue it from that. of course, if you just wanna see some action, it's a OK movie for you. buy it on sale or just go buy the soundtrack.

Having missed any preceding films, I knew from the genre that this was going to make little to no sense to me at points, but right from the off I was confused...

Making no attempts to explain itself, it gets straight into the action. Fantastical fighting and some incredible wire work really do make this film a visual spectacle, but the absence of continuity at times does hinder it.

Certain scenes appear to have been either cut completely, or just parts of them left in, which again doesn't help the mix. If you watch the trailer you'll see that Jet Li is in it... but when you watch the film, you realise he has been left on the cutting room floor...! Overall it makes for a very enjoyable, if not inexplicably odd/hard to follow film - but it's certainly made me want to watch the earlier instalments!!