Dir. Tsui Hark, 2005, South Korea/Hong Kong/China, 140 mins, Subtitles
Cast: Donnie Yen, Sun Honglei. Lau Kar-Leung, Lu Yi, Charlie Young
Review by Hemanth Kissoon
“Drink your enemies’ blood and you won’t be afraid of them.”
A line said in all seriousness by one of the good guys to a post battle-shaken heroine.
You should not be a film reviewer unless you love film, but what happens when you come across a movie that not all only has zero redeemable qualities but seems to be attempting to push the art form back in time? That is the feeling this reviewer had after watching and thinking about Seven Swords. Like a hungry man scrabbling about in the dirt hunting for a morsel of sustenance, effort has been made to think of some good things to say about this film.
There was only one good thing about Seven Swords: a three minute (out of 140) action sequence as part of the climax where one of the heroes and the chief villain fight it out in a narrow corridor by balancing high up on the walls. That’s it.
The film seems to be set somewhere in China a long time ago – we are not told when and where. (Only in the press notes does the film get a context, not a lot of good for audiences.) The Emperor of China has decreed that all martial arts be outlawed on pain of death. An entrepreneurial mini-army of 3,000, under the leadership of Fire-Wind (Honglei), enforces the ban for payment per head executed. With such a large number and the greed of Fire-Wind, they kill indiscriminately regardless of rule break. One village is due to be terrorised. A government executioner turned repentant rebel, who has been secretly training the village in martial arts, decides to go with two of its inhabitants to Mount Heaven to search for the legendary Master Shadow-glow and seek his help. To find him they follow a meteorite shower. Once found, the Master calls upon four warriors who live with him, plus the three that arrived, and hands them seven mystical swords to fight against injustice.
This film is awful. Where to begin? Let’s start with the lack of irony or tongue-in-cheek at what is a pretty stupid plot. When you have names of swords like ‘The Transience Sword’, ‘The Star-Chaser Sword’, ‘The Celestial Beam Sword’ and ‘The Deity Sword’, you expect there almost to be a wink to the camera or a spiritual reason why the swords are called that. There was neither knowingness nor depth. The seven warriors blur into each other due to lack of characterisation, dialogue or enough background detail. Confusion abounds at character motivation and the direction the film takes.
There is an attempt at spectacle, choreography, romance, interesting narrative structure, dialogue and acting, but the attempt is fumbled at best and tokenistic at worst. The most heinous crime of all though is that this, an action movie, is boring. The person sitting next to me looked at his watch an hour in – that to me is not a sign of being enthralled.
You can’t help but compare a martial arts movie to the bench-marks, like: mental pastiche Kung Fu Hustle, grittily grandiose Musa: The Warrior, beautiful House of Flying Daggers, epic Hero, funny Mr Vampire and the consummate Crouching Tiger. It may not be fair but there are only a couple of the genre that reach the UK every year and thus stick in the memory.
Blame lies squarely at the feet of the veteran action director. Tsui Hark is the martial arts Michael Bay. Is there a worse indictment?
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