San lau sing wu dip gim

A typically over the top, highly kinetic wuxia epic from Hong Kong. This one offers a middling budget and an all-star cast, although it's worth noting that story-wise it's much better when detailing larger-than-life characters than it is bringing to life the complexities of a muddled political script. In essence what you get are a number of main characters interacting and occasionally doing battle with some rival factions who have murder in mind.

Part of the film is an ultra-cheesy romance between Tony Leung and Joey Wang, which is quite fun with a lot of flying around in the woods and sweet moments. It's surprisingly old fashioned but genre fans will be more interested in the high energy action scenes, of which there are plenty. These possess extremely choppy choreography - so much so that it's hard to see what's going on at times - but make up for it by being inventively violent, with opponents literally exploding in two when struck by power sword strikes.

A lot of fun comes from seeing Michelle Yeoh as a striking femme fatale although she's slightly underutilised here which is no surprise given the amount of characters in the movie. Donnie Yen is also in the film but used even less although I was pleased to see that his character is a typical hard man even at this early stage of his career. Although the budget isn't high, the trappings of the wuxia genre - outlandish costumes, outdoor scenery, effective sets - are handled adroitly. Animal lovers should be aware of the real-life killing of a deer which may be unpalatable for some.

Had Butterfly and Sword had anything even remotely resembling a comprehensible plot, I would have no hesitation in awarding it 9 out of 10. There is loads to enjoy in this totally bonkers Wuxia tale; the cast is great and the martial arts set-pieces are completely mad. Unfortunately, from start to finish, I had absolutely no idea who was who, what was happening or why.

However lousy at telling a story it may be, Butterfly and Sword succeeds magnificently in presenting some of the craziest action ever seen on screen. In true Wuxia fashion, every character has the ability to fly, spin acrobatically through the air during fights, and survive all manner of blows that would be fatal to you or I; however, the protagonists in this movie go even further—one guy is even able to launch himself like an arrow, blasting his way straight through the enemy.

The volume of cartoon-style gore on show is also pretty impressive. Loads of baddies get hacked, beheaded and generally mutilated during the fights and in the obligatory bamboo forest scene, pretty much all of the enemy end up impaled on bamboo stalks! If as much time and effort had been spent on the narrative as on the creative martial arts choreography, Butterfly and Sword would be an almost perfect piece of entertainment. As it is, I can't bring myself to give this any more than 6 out of 10.

I found this movie slightly disappointing.

It seems there are several different strains of HK Action Flicks. Jackie Chan does pure fist/leg martial arts with no wires. Jet Li tends to use more wires, but "Once Upon a Time in China" seemed to be more dependent on the action than the wires. This move depends so much on wires and magic powers that you really don't get very much in the way of good swordplay and kung-fu. It seemed pretty cheesy from the beginning, and I left it on only because I had nothing better to do. Then it started getting good. The plot gets pretty complicated, as you see hidden motivations and conflicting desires causing problems for the characters. Unfortunately, the movie never really capitalizes on some of the things the characters discover, and the ending reveals a mystery they really hadn't set up well, forcing the characters to reveal too much in their dialogue, as in, "You see, this was my plan all along! Now I shall kill you!" Not dull, exactly, but it never fulfills the potential of the plot developments to overcome a cheesy approach to martial arts.

Butterfly And Sword is about some assassins and a drag queen with a red ball trying to get a scroll for a eunuch, I think. The movie is okay I guess. It does have extremely weird @$$ moments particularly the final fight which I thought was one of the best things I've ever seen in Chinese cinema. The pacing is a bit awkward as the movie will oscillate between love happy friendly romance and human interaction and brutal action filled with dismemberment and fast paced bloodier than a tampon sword play action. Argh! But I felt the whole romance and happy $#!+ was crowding the movie a bit making it hard to maintain interest especially when you don't really care about all the lovey-dovey garbage. Plus the story was a bit incomprehensible. But whatever. At least the crazy fights and the violence was enough to carry the movie through, so there.

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.