The Blade - A Lenda

It's a shame that a wonderful movie such as THE BLADE received so little coverage/attention from the masses. The only time I have heard about it was from a renounced film critic in HK, and he RAVED about it. And he sure was RIGHT! Tsui Hark did an excellent job here. The atmosphere is good, and the characters are real. As for the action, yes, it's a little too fast, but nonetheless beautifully choreographed.

This movie was the one of the first true martial artist films I have seen. Since which I have collected a fine library and yet this one still stands out for the story line. A very impressive movie that managed to keep me in rapture during the whole scenario. I would give a big recommendation to any who appreciate martial artist films or just action films to take a look at this one. Even though the movie as I saw it was fairly dark that is easily looked over as the story line pulls you in.

A beautifully filmed story of love and heroism, hate and revenge. The main character leaves in pursuit of his father's murderer, brandishing his broken sword as his weapon. Unfortunately, in his first confrontation with the murderer, a tattooed character that looks like he jumped from the pages of a comic book, our hero is brutally beaten and loses an arm. Forced to live a young boy he trains himself in a one-handed sword technique from a book called The Blade, and sets of in search of revenge again.

The greatest Wu Xia Pian I've ever seen in my life (and god knows I've seen a lot). The final action sequence, including Hung Yan-Yan, is now a legend in Kung-fu movies, just like the duel between Jet Li and Donnie Yen in Once Upon A Time in China 2... Tsui Hark's direction is fabulous despite an obvious lack of money. And Chiu Man-Cheuk is a tremendous actor/kung-fu artist, as charismatic as Bruce Lee himself in his quest for revenge. Too bad this actor is now semi-retired from movie industry...

(sorry for my horrible english, but I'm french)

Apparently, this is quite difficult to see in theatres. I managed to, but it is on video. I imagine that on video, the subtitles are as difficult to read as the ones in "A Chinese Ghost Story" (Another Hark title). Many of the fight scenes are, like the other title, shot on a set in near total darkness with some artificial light as "moonlight". Again, on a screen, beautiful, but on video, a bit hard to see. There is A LOT of fighting, chopped arms legs and heads. (What do you expect, with the action centered around a knife/sword factory?) It's so violent that after a while I found myself laughing to relieve the tension. And the spewing blood can be comical. Like many of these movies, even the "good" guys have questionable motives.

I was interested in this because I'd read that Hark stopped production in the middle because of one of the actress's complaints and rewrote it from a woman's perspective. Still, the main female character is whiny, silly and sheltered, little more than a typical HK plot device to get fights going. I found her character very annoying.

Plot: 4 of 10, fight scenes 8 of 10 IF you can see them on a large screen. Subtitles are lousy, but not really necessary.