Xiang wei jin ling

Ringing Sword seems to be one of these small studio features that were produced and shot in Taiwan by Hong Kong based movie makers. As such, we've seen worse, but also way better introductions into the Wu Xia genre. The movie found me by accident from total obscurity, and I was interested enough to spend few dollars into it and take a peek. Let's say this wasn't the best investment in my life, but not too much of a disappointment.

This film is a very standard fare of old-school Wu Xia with your typical mysterious strangers, a tale of intrigue and revenge, lost relatives and the maintaining of honour, and that's about it. Unimaginative plot, almost extinct martial arts choreography and lazy looking fighting take the edge off the action and story telling, so there's not much to write home about.

On the plus side, the landscapes are beautiful and there's no corny looking studio sets. Soundtrack is very minimalistic and traditional and tries it's best to put some thrills into the action scenes, but however nice the music is, the burden is too much to bear only for it's shoulders. Alas. However, the visual output of our lady hero looks good, and we have some funky looking bad guys with some leopard-patterned attires, too. A special honorary mention goes to the fat bald man with weird looking beard and wicked looking sabre. Too bad he doesn't have more screen time.

There's lot worse movies out there from the genre, but there's nothing that makes this one positively separate from any of the basic Wu Xia swashbuckling epics from the 60's to the 70's. Not bad enough to induce unintentional comedy laughters, not good enough to keep your attention fully up. Still, for the Wu Xia fans there are also worse ways to spend your 90 minutes of lazy Sunday afternoon. If you are into this type, it's worth a look as a history lesson of smaller budget Wu Xia, but there's very little to come back to.

On the side note, I found a copy of this on all-regions DVD released by Fusian Films. The print is said to be digitally remastered, but still it seems like being in terrible shape and clearly misses bits of film here and there. The English subtitles are included and look like they are part of the original print. In spite of bad quality, it's in viewable condition, and frankly the movie itself was so mediocre that it really didn't leave me longing for a fully restored version.

This is my truth. What is yours?