Siu ngo gong woo: Dung Fong Bat Bai

Provided you are slightly interested in fantasy, horror, and a little kung-fu, this film is the best in the genre. Great choreography and music, ok humor, very good lighting, nearly perfect sound (unlike many fantasy flicks), a very good story and colorful and dynamic cinematography (Lau Moon Tong) that surpasses even Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Lee, 2000) sometimes though it is nine years older. On every other fields CTHD is simply crushed by this fabulous film. I can't believe CTHD got 22843 votes and Swordsman 2 less than 1% of that. Mwahahahehe: have all these guys missed something! :-P

In Asia Jet Li is very famous and most Chinese who are interested in movies will probably have seen this already. In the rest of the world this is probably only seen by people who liked Evil Dead (Raimi, 1982), Chinese Ghost Story (also directed by Siu-Tung Ching, 1987) AND at recently CTHD. Featured are Recoiling whip, Flying bomb, Rotation of the stars (massive action scene with 6 swordfighters), Essence absorbing stance, Invincible Dawn, Kiddo and Scum Bag (last two are characters). Some of the story elements are hard to follow, but that doesn't diminish the entertaining value (story continues AND action continues): just go see it again if you didn't understand it 8-)

THIS is groundbreaking: not CTHD. The action scenes in CTHD may be shot beautifully and without many cuts, but Swordsman 2 definitely has more fantasy and the director isn't afraid of showing blood like Ang Lee WAS unfortunately. Swordsman 2 tries to embed the story in Japanese civil war and therefore the film starts with Japanese swordfighters (speaking Kantonese though) and Japanese music. After the titles we are left with gravity-defying swordfighters of Chinese AND Japanese origin and ninjas as they fight in South China in the 22nd year of Emperor Sun. Also there is a megalomaniac who slowly changes into a woman and there is a girl who constantly is mistaken for a man (not exactly like Vasquez in 'Aliens'). Don't ask for the significance of that plz. Swordsman 2 (haven't seen part 1 yet) is NOT over-rated with 8.6 (211 votes), and provided you liked Iron Monkey (Woo-Ping Yuen, 1993), this one will blow you out of your socks and chop you in half. Finally, the popular Stormriders (Wai Keung Lau, 1998) also couldn't come near this masterpiece.

10 points out of 10 :-)

(1992) Swordsman II (In Chinese with English subtitles) ACTION

Full of big name Chinese stars from the likes of Jet Li, Rosamond Kwan, Jacky Cheung and Hong Kong actress veteran Brigitte Lin follows a mythical tale about ruling powers within' China. Full of wire- fu effects, and not so much a fan of those either but plenty of sword fights and beheading's (looks fake, of course), back stabbers and betrayals and some comedy relief. Similar to what one can find on one of those long Chinese soap opera films except that it's all crammed into a film. The other thing I like about this film is that it's not all serious as say "Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon" or even "Hero"! Jet Li's boyish persona was still intact here before his movies went all serious and the subtitled version is better than seeing it dubbed.

Asia the invincible? what the hell's that? the guy's surname is Dong Fang, which is a normal chinese surname, means "the east", he call himeself Bu Bai, coz he has not, did not, and thinks would not be defeated, so it means The Undefeated.

I know translation is a tough job, no matter how good you think you did, you still cannot transform all the meanings, undertones, indications in a culture sense. But not like this one! This is a very beautiful movie, all the lines, the scenes, the costumes, all very authenticly chinese, and stunning. And the poems recited in the movie, and the haunting song...hate to see all of these been ruined by the rediculous translantion.

You know, many things are just not meant to be translated, many words in chinese, they just can't be properly translated, such as "tian xia","qian kun", they are somewhat close to the meaning of "the world", but never is in the same sense of it.

So, for those who deminished the plot of the movie, I just wana tell you, it was based on one of the best selling Wuxia books in China, and the lines, they are very beautiful, in chinese. And for those who talked about the wire works, hello, this is a fantasy movie, and even with the wiring, have you ever seen body movements as beautiful as this in other movies, say the matrix? Wiring doesn't neccesarily mean it's not googd KongFu, This movie has some of the best fight scenes I have ever seen, wiring is only a basic requirement for action fantasies, but the thing they did with the fight scene, that's art, man. You have to be a KongFu master and an artist at the same time to be able to design, to creat such beautiful things.

In short, advice for people from America, Europe, Africa...no-china£¬If you wana have a better understanding of the movie, READ THE BOOK FIRST, and before that, LEARN SOME CHINESE! :)

many of the previous comments have cited this film as one the best in the martial arts genre. i think there's a little more to it. this film articulates one of the central philosophical questions of the Chinese tradition: withdrawal from the world vs. facing the world. it is a theme featured in all of china's great philosophers, Lao-Tze, Zhuang-Tze, Confucious, and as well as its great poets and artists. it is also, arguably, the central question of Chinese Buddhism.

recall that the film premises on the withdrawal of Jet Li's character and his clan from the world of martial arts (the uniquely Chinese, "Jiang-Hu"). they were tired of the constant battles and blood-shed. "Ox-back Mountain" was, for them, the idyllic place to escape the bitterness of the world. the events of the movie--Jet Li's involvement with Ying Ying, the rescue of Ren Woxing, the appearance of Dong Fang Bu Bai, the brutal slaughter of the Hua Mountain clan--all serve to problem's the possibility of exiting the world.

Linghu Chong's (Jet Li's) conversation with Ren Woxing captures this conflict in these immortal words (my translation): "you (Linghu Chong) know so little about the world. when there is people, there is hatred and resentment, and when there is hatred and resentment, there is Jiang Hu (the world)." this is a pessimistic view of the world, but one that rightly argues for the importance of resentment in the order of the world. moreover, unlike most films that fall into this trap, the Swordsman II does not posit love as a force of reconstitution and re-ordering; love only complicates things...

For sheer entertainment value, it's hard to beat this film. If you're not concerned about intellectual stimulation, you'll have a great time. The plot is completely confusing, but it helps if you've seen "The Swordsman", the first movie in this sequence.

Don't worry; you won't be paying too much attention to the plot, because if you do you'll get a headache. In a capsule, various martial arts clans vie for possession of a scroll which describes how to obtain secret powers. This is a great excuse to hang together a bunch of amazing martial arts sequences, silly humor, and drunken singing -- and you'll probably sing right along. In fact, you'll see where "The Matrix" got a lot of its inspiration when you watch this film. (The Wachowski brothers worship Jet Li.)

As in "The Swordsman", I appreciated the fact that there are a number of strong female roles in this film. Hollywood doesn't allow many women action heroes, and this film shows how women can knock your socks off, if given the chance, in the fighting sequences.

Assume movie essence absorbing stance!