Qi qiao feng huang bi yu dao

Mang Fei receives the jade sword with strict orders not to use it. He promises father seven things:never look for trouble and keep to yourself, don't strike up friendships with complete strangers, never gamble with strangers, always be courteous to a monk, never display your purse, don't believe all you hear, avoid the women that will be your weakness. He rides off to a small waterside tea house on the set of Shaw Brothers. Ha Ling-Ling befriends him (she is supposed to be a man). He does not strike up friendships with complete strangers. First fight – he interrupts a rape. She takes him home to rob him. He notices her attempt them leaves but without his sword. He returns and cannot find it. He meets Yueh Hua the drunk fisherman and borrows his horse to ride to a temple. Three swordsmen stop him as suddenly there is a big conspiracy and everyone is looking for him.

The story becomes full of itself and makes no sense after 40 minutes. The characters are cartoonish. The fights are bouncing up and down and dancing around while weapons are waved nowhere near the intended target. The action director Siu Wong-Lung seems only to have experience as an extra otherwise. Stinker alert - you have been warned.

I got to see this on a poorly transferred print. Overexposed and with some kind of aspect ratio problem that leaves the middle out of focus and the sides sharp.

I could see hints of good cinematography in the first 10 minutes, so I had high hopes.

I wont go into details but the plot meanders all over and is very confusing. Characters are introduced and gotten rid of with no fanfare. The end even is very anti-climactic.

That all said it's kind of interesting.

It's kind of a revival of Wuxia style film during a period when everyone was making kung fu flicks.

Those older 60s wuxia flicks are often very soap opera-ish. Less macho bravado and more intrigue.

The martial arts in wuxia is metaphorical. It's about the guy with integrity or purity or just plain more spiritual power triumphing over the bad guys.

This movie is definitely emulating those older genre flicks with its tea houses and villas and swordplay centered fighting.

They got my hope up in the beginning. With the "7 promises" of the title. These are more like 7 good ideas for the naive traveler. But this gave me hope that it was going to involve some Confucian parables and character development.

Instead it kind of wanders from miniboss to miniboss until it gets to the main boss.

Not a bad movie, but kind of typical for films out of Taiwan in the 70s. It's a notch below a good movie in several areas at once, but still an ok film to watch if you are just being lazy on a weekend.