A Espada Selvagem

Confusing at first. It was hard for me to figure out who was on whose side, and the English translations sometimes read as gibberish, but those are petty qualms. The film is really fun to watch. The wire action is cool and over the top. The fight scenes and gore are very indulgent.

The cast are great, especially Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, and Jimmy Lin. This is a hilarious movie. For those into Martial Arts movies, this is worth a look-see.

I own this movie on DVD, have watched it several times, and still wouldn't even attempt to give a more in depth plot summary than "There are political factions. They seem to want something. They kill lots of people."

Who knows what this flick is about.

But with the glorious Michelle Yeoh looking especially radiantly beautiful and ripping heads out at the root through the unadulterated power of her fabulous costumes, who cares? Add in the always charming, greatly lamented Tony Leung as her innocuous-secret-identity-guy brother, a plot would almost get in the way.

If you can embrace the sacrifice of story in favor of pure action and character development in favor of raw screen power, you will have a great time watching this movie.

Emphatically not for kids, "Butterfly and Sword" is a strange amalgam of brutal and unusually bloody kung-fu, and a complex love triangle... make that parallelogram. Michelle Yeoh, Tony Leung, and Donnie Yen are at their best, and Joey Wong is, as always, nice to look at. This film is infamous for the abruptly truncated ending in the version that was distributed in Hong Kong and on HK DVDs. For the original, which includes the end of the film that is apparently too shocking for HK audiences, look for the Taiwanese version, called "Comet Butterfly Sword."

I brought this movie as a fan of Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen films. I was not disappointed. The choreography was reasonably good. The storyline was also good. Michelle Yeoh delivered an outstanding performance as usual. The comedy provided was also reasonable although not hysterically funny. I don't particularly enjoy seeing blood in films, this film provided enough of it (though not entirely realistic). I enjoy listening to Chinese songs, the theme tune at the end credits was well performed by Yeoh.

My only criticism(s) are that the director Ching Siu-Tung could have taken care with the use of camera angles; the shots in some of the fight scenes seemed almost entirely random, the user becomes confused during the fight scenes. Furthermore, when I watched the end of this film, it seemed to end suddenly without even a proper ending...what happened as soon as Yeoh turned her back to the screen?

How can you go wrong when Michelle is at the helm?

Movies that have hit the mainstream like So Close and Crouching Tiger owe it all to cult favorites like this one. This is line jumping and supernatural feats during the core creation. Besides, you'll go crazy trying to figure out how so many people can mistake a HOTTIE like Michelle for a man!

I dare ANYONE to say (and describe) how it was not better than Supercop 2!

Not her best work to date, but well worth the rental. WATCH IT!