Seven Swords

Tsui Hark is all that is great about Chinese cinema. Tsui Hark is all that is wrong with Chinese cinema. He has a miraculous eye for action, a stunning visual style, an ability to create iconic imagery and a healthy respect for the art of wire fu. He is also lumbered with the inability to properly pace his story, a tendency to over populate his movies, and a plotting shorthand which gives only the frailest skeleton of a story.

After making superb films such as Once Upon A Time In China, Peking Opera and Zu Warriors as well as producing wonders such as Iron Monkey and Time and Tide, Tsui Hark suffered a series of missteps following a pretty disastrous attempt to make an American movie.

The Seven Swords while not perfect signals a return of the Hark who made Once Upon A Time In China. Tsui Hark has often told of his love for the old swordplay novels in interviews and finally working on a Wu Xia epic of his own seems to have revitalised the director.

Taking his inspiration from a novel Seven Swords is the first in a planned series of movies which deals with seven warriors entrusted with swords forged by an ancient master and endowed with special abilities. The story while slight is often quite engaging but ultimately confused and a lot of the time despite the sheer charisma of the main villain feels like a warm up for the main act. Essentially the emperor has ordered that all practitioners of Kung Fu be executed with a fair price being put on the head of any one taught in the disciplines and a man by the name of Fire-Wind is determined to profit from the decree.

At its core is a confrontation between Fire-Wind and his old master, and defacto head of the swords, Fu Qingzhu. What this means is that there is quite an emphasis on tactics as Fu, knowing he cannot defeat Fire Wind through force alone, seeks to undermine his foes position within his own group. Despite the simplicity of this plot things are complicated somewhat by a lot of interaction between the swords, the villagers and other key characters. In fact the film is positively overcrowded with the seven swords, Fire Wind, a Korean slave girl, and a plethora of villagers all getting their own plots and subplots within the main narrative.

The problem being that the movie was intended to be four hours long and in an attempt to condense things down to 2 and half hours the already quite airy Tsui Hark makes his plot points even more ethereal until it gets to the point where you identify with characters due to other movies you have seen them in.

A key example of this is Donnie Yen who burns up the screen as an enigmatic Korean swordsman, it’s quite clear he is a major member of the group but you only get a feel for his presence if you can identify with his other powerful roles such as OUATIC II and Iron Monkey.

That paints a bad picture as the plot is fairly engrossing but suffers from a lot of jumping, especially at the beginning. However there are enough plus points to make this an excellent movie. To start with the movie is absolutely gorgeous aided by stunning cinematography, a keen eye for mise-en-scene, and some truly wonderful design aesthetics, Fire Wind’s thugs in particular are all wonderful to look at if a little lacking when it comes to doing anything.

The action is also suitably well handled and although it can be a bit jumpy, with some head scratching uses of slow motion, there are enough good ideas to make each fight interesting. Indeed in this movie you’ll see a duel involving a sword getting juggled into the air, a clash of blades which is literally ripping the surroundings apart, a beautifully shot raid on Fire Wind’s fortress, and a final duel which, in keeping with Hark tradition, flows vertically as well as horizontally.

Calling this film Wu-Xia, in the current western sense, is like calling Lord of the Rings a historical epic. While it has swordplay in it the subject matter makes it far more of an action fantasy than a Wu-Xia epic. While it suffers from being cut down and for being the first in an intended series, one of the most interesting scenes concerns a very cool sword that is unearthed and never seen again, it is a movie that buzzes with energy and magic and is well worth a watch.

Tsui Hark may not be back to full strength, but this delve into his favourite genre shows he has more in his future than Van Damme films.

8/10