Seven Swords
Reviewed by Lee Alon
Not counting the horrible Black Mask 2, Seven
Swords represents Tsui Hark's return to the director's seat, a hallowed place
the man perhaps doesn't take as seriously as he did back when he helmed mega-classics
like New Dragon Inn and Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain. His latest opens
on a startling, refreshing note with brutal action segments depicting the
movie's villains taking out an entire village of martial artists, practitioners
deemed illegal by the remote, anonymous emperor. Although merely glancing
at the carnage rather than showcasing a full-on bloodbath, this scene works
amazingly well in that it brings back campy joys straight out of the genre's
heyday.
Even more, the excellent bad guys, resplendent in outlandish costumes and
makeup, seem as if from some satisfying mid 80's hack 'n' slash number a
la Barbarian Queen or Conan, which of course any whole-hearted action lover
will spontaneously warm to. Led by General Firewind, the evildoers move as
skull-collecting bounty hunters in a vicious campaign of murder, not even
bothering to spare women and children. Delicious! Firewind's by far the film's
best character, done by superb Sun Honglei, an always great actor whom we’ve
enjoyed before in “The Road Home” and “Zhou Yu's Train”. His motley crew
of madcap killers provides an abundant source of fun as well, each one deserving
a good pat on the back for a job well-executed (pun intended).
Sadly, beyond this Seven Swords is a bloated behemoth at least fifty minutes
too long. Most of it falls into easily avoidable traps, consisting mainly
of mainstream sword action, too many characters for its own good and the
usual focus on virtuous-righteous heroes winging in to save the day. The
titular seven swords refer to a league of champions devoted to fighting injustice
and protecting poor villagers from Firewind's rampaging force of deviants.
Naturally, you can't help but root for the baddies, seeing as these synthetic
goodie two-shoes have none of the amiable quirks that made us sympathize
with, say, Kurusawa's Seven Samurai. The side of goodness here is just annoying.
Their pivotal protagonists are next to invisible, with both Donnie Yen (Iron
Monkey, Hero) and torpid-looking popstar Leon Lai almost asleep at the wheel.
Others, such as veteran martial artist Lau Kar Leung (who also choreographed)
and Charlie Yeung (recently spotted in New Police Story together with half
of Hong Kong's film and stage community) can be witnessed merely marking
time till the paychecks start rolling.
Granted, 7S has just that, seven cool swords, but they're caught trying to
pose as the Green Destiny half the time, with the other half spent impersonating
Lord of the Rings or Musa. In fact, Seven Swords is an outright rip of the
latter, with a story following a group of refugees as they stand off against
maniacal warriors, all set against harsh backdrops and some eye-catching
locales. Donnie Yen even falls for a Korean princess-turned-slave in a lift
out of Musa's tale, where a liberated slave warrior from Korea fell for a
princess from China (Zhang Ziyi). How obvious can you get? And said Korean
princess (Kim So Yeun) doesn't even hold to scrutiny, doing a horribly stereotypical
portrayal of the ever-abused Korean woman, bouts of hysteria included. Together
with a few select moments of bubble-gum elasticity, the relationship between
Yen and Kim sticks in the movie's mid-section like eternal desert dunes separating
one oasis from another, as audiences long for a reprieve from this artificially
sentimental dry spell.
And Seven Swords, despite costing more than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
or any other martial arts flick in recent memory, doesn't enliven the sleeping
genre, and has none of the magic associated with its cherished contributions.
We don't get wirefu, sword magic or any of those superlatively goofy elements,
while there's more than ample evidence suggesting the project suffers from
the same pompous self-importance afflicting previous bores of a similar ilk,
to wit Hero and Warriors of Heaven and Earth. It also ends on a glaringly
sequelish note, with the hero posse riding into the dusty horizon.
Offensively, Tsui Hark and his minions here kowtow to today's political landscape,
fearful of making certain power brokers up north nervous with "subversive"
content, hence the cavalier crew head to the capital aiming to politely convince
the Emperor to cancel his anti-martial arts edict. Back in the day they'd
make the sequel showing them dethroning the bastard amid buckets of blood,
but this isn't the place to cry over lost liberties or increased sensitivity.
All told, Seven Swords does not justify the long wait we've endured getting
to it. It's long, laborious, burdened with extraneous baggage and even has
a poorly dubbed over voice track, since half the cast speak Cantonese, the
others Putonghua and Korean. What a mess of lost opportunities.
Rating: 5/10
Directed by Tsui Hark
Starring Donnie Yen, Sun Honglei, Leon Lai, Charlie
Yeung, Jiang Jingchu, Kim So Yeun
2005, Cantonese/Korean, 154 minutes
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