The Sword (Ming jian, 1980)

Jaiming Tan

Hong Kong

83 mins, color, Mandarin (English subtitles)

Yet another wuxia flick? No, not really. This is one of the best. Some compare it with CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and although this is a bit too much, their assessment is not wholly exaggerated. The story is very linear and unpredictable only to the extent that it was unexpectedly tragic. Despite the everyone-dies bit, there isn't really much going on to get in the way of excellent sword fights. This, as the title suggests, is what the movie is all about.

Ok, maybe there was a tiny plot struggling to get out but it was summarily squashed before it could do much harm. Li (Adam Cheng) has trained for ten years but still does not know whether he can cut the mustard. Literally and figuratively. He wanders in search of presumably the last great challenge, which is a duel with the most famous swordsman Hua. This motif is common not just to these stories but to the Chinese and even Japanese literature in general. Upon realizing his dream he (predictably) finds that fame and glory do not fulfill his expectations. Unfortunately, he cannot just go on his way with a hard lesson learned because he is caught in a murderous web of forsaken love, jealousy, sword-collecting, suicide, and tantalizing blood-letting. This involves an evil sword, a high-school sweetheart, and clueless brat, and a remarkably sadistic husband. Eventually, everyone's caput and Li ditches the evil sword. Hey, I did say the movie was almost plot-free.

Not so for the action. This is one of the best HK films of this type and I don't even care for the genre so much. The movie features the most scintillating sword play I have seen committed to film thus far. There are no grand battles, or imaginative, and bordering on the ridiculous, inventions, just laconic and very efficient sword dancing. The costumes are kept to unassuming essentials, the action is very tight, fluid, and nothing short of amazing. There is some wire work but it is not too distracting (I happen to enjoy gravity-defying stunts, so I don't really care about the usual criticisms) and although there's one completely over the top performance at the very end, the mood is generally subdued. Unlike most films of the type, "The Sword" does not degenerate into an editing frenzy that is hard to follow, and is not shot with a 15mm fisheye lens (in other words, it actually looks like a Western film). The music can get annoying as there isn't a lot of development in the score department.

The Chinese DVD I have has nothing in English on the cover, and even the menu is in Chinese. On the other hand, there are removable English subtitles and (surprise!) the quality was actually pretty good. Apart for three or four misspellings, there were no problems whatsoever. The sound isn't too bad but there's the usual echo in the 5.1 mix. There are some scratches and lines but nothing too annoying. The colors are a bit off, and there's actually a lot of bleeding through and ghosting. Still, the pixellation is not worse than what I've seen in other WA releases. For the street price of around $10, you can't beat it anyway. There are no extras.

April 5, 2001. BLS