Mou hap chat gung jue

This movie is amazing. If you like wild, sword-fighting, beautiful women, violence all wrapped around an ancient fable - then this movie is for you. It is so out there - yes, the sub-titled version I viewed was pretty bad - so it was hard to follow the "story" but it doesnt matter - everyone is after the legendary swordsman with "Heaven's Sword" but the action sequences are stunning and there are images and special effects in this movie that put most comic books and all Hollywood action movies to shame. Guilty, messy fun!!!

An employee at my favorite video store in town has a more, er, colorful title (a far more crude way of saying "Holy Fecal Matter!") written on the box of this film - & you'll be saying it to yourself a few minutes into this exceedingly strange & wonderful piece of Hong Kong lunacy. It's utter madness from start to finish.

I've seen this movie twice & I still am not sure what it's about - within the first ten minutes you see men battling each other on the backs of men with wings. I have yet to see a movie come out of America, without digital effects, that so much resembles a comic book in its ideas & style. It's so much fun.

Both Maggie Cheung & Michelle Yeoh (two-thirds of the Heroic Trio) are in this, & if those Hong Kong lovelies aren't enough, let me just say this: people I know have watched this while doing certain illegal substances & found new insights into their lives, but I have watched it stone-cold sober & felt like I had been tripping for hours afterwards.

HOLY WEAPON is a strange little comedy from Wong Jing, very lowbrow and very scattershot and not what you're expecting if you're looking for a traditional wuxia fable. It's a shame that the end result is so scattershot because Jing certainly assembles an all-star cast of notables here, particularly in terms of female talent: Michelle Yeoh kicks up a storm, Carol Do Do Cheng and Sandra Ng bring the comedy, and there are plenty of other familiar faces besides. The film is top and tailed by some good action courtesy of Japanese swordsman Simon Yam, and there are some wacky and inventive scenes throughout. But the whole mid section is just aimless, repetitive comedy that never goes anywhere, which is a shame.

All rightly then. If you are in the mood for beautiful women, transsexuals, raving vampires, a Chinese Dr Frank N. Footer with Don King hair, severed heads, and a talking penis, then this is the movie for you. The plot is absurdly complicated in this parody of Chinese martial arts epics, and at times the movie actually is hilarious. For no particularly good reason it becomes imperative to assemble a team of seven virgins, led by the delectable Maggie Cheung. If only they had cast favorite gender bender Brigitte Lin as the evil sword dude, this movie could have achieved cult status. "Holy Weapon" is still a good diversion, a guilty pleasure, but not one to admit to.

Simon Yam plays Super Sword, a villain who transmogrifies into a badly animated cleaver whenever good guys threaten his evil plans. He's opposed by the Seven Maidens, who metamorphose at film's end into the Virgin Sword, a super weapon that resembles Texas pop group The Polyphonic Spree more than a death dealing blade of vengeance. In between some decent fight sequences, the film opts for cheap and sleazy scatalogical humor, most of which is childish beyond words, but the film does feature some memorable imagery, including the remarkable Black Widow Ninja and an opening sequence that, intentionally or otherwise, echoes Bunuel's Simon of the Desert. By no means a classic, Holy Weapon should be watched with your finger atop the fast forward button. The usual ineptly translated subtitles periodically slip off the bottom of the screen, but you won't be missing much important dialogue.