Jian nu

This is a difficult film to rate. It's made beautifully, but what kind of a movie is it ? It features Pauline Chan, so it's probably a Cat 3 movie, and it is soft porn in a way. But it also has rather strange story involving weird death, lesbianism, and surprisingly good sword fighting scenes.

All the actors in this movie can act, and the fighters do incredible moves. But the story is very unusual. It's in a way more trashy than it needs to be.

The movie is gorgeously made. Every scene is meticulously shot. The background is always beautiful. But there's kind of a strange cruelty to the whole thing. It's kind of a weird psycho drama.

One thing I can say is that the actors in this movie deserved a better role. All of them has good on screen presence, and they should have gone on to make really good movies.

I haven't seen a strange movie like this since I saw Prostitutes 92 which was made around the same time as this movie. Maybe I should check to see if the same people wrote and directed the two movies.

I have just watched "Slave of the sword" and "butterfly and the sword" and it seems to me that some of the same scenes are used in these two films - my guess is that "Butterfly and the sword" is the donor and "Slave of the sword" is the receiving patient in this transfusion of re-edited scene material. this is for me not a strange phenomenon in the world of cinematography it is in itself a sub-genre called compilation movies which draws on the resources of other films.

"Butterfly and the sword" is a excellent Kung Fu movie with a strong ensemble of fighting scenes in the, for fu flick lovers, well known lyrical style, a love tangent that runs through out the movie never getting to dominating and flavored with a knifes tip of traditional Chinese slap stick comedy.

"Slaves of the sword" apart from the recycling of frames that has a tendency to give it a unoriginal feel, is also a excellent movie, well maybe not excellent but then great movie with it's own strengths. The fighting scenes are often abrupt in their editing, which propels the narrative forward in a way that can feel somewhat unnatural;) The strength of this film is its erotic dimension; beautiful and enchanting is the human desire and lust portrayed with flames and dogs as psychological symbols interwoven (yes there are tits in the movie ;). these scenes work with a passion but still succeeds in keeping the pictures decent, dignified and pittoresk.

Two good movies - worth watching

This movie is only good for some T&A. It was in the "Martial Arts" section, but there really isn't much fighting. It's more of a porno, actually. The acting isn't very good, either. If you want to see an entertaining martial arts movie, try a Jackie Chan movie. If you want to see an artsy martial arts film, try "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."