The Blade a Film by Tsui Hark

Uniqicly brought to you by master HK director Tsui Hark, I consider him to be one of the greatest editing directors of are time, it becomes one of the most evident things in The Blade. He cuts flash backs, flash cuts and structures the film around one of the three main characters point of view to represent the films plot and story telling.

The storyline gets push ahead by her thoughts, her action and her fantasies giving the film a real no-liner style. Something I find HK movies doing all to often but as it is true to this film, I felt that it worked best for the story and enabled the characters to move more freely within the borders of the film. Each and every scene adds more intrigue and builds more drive for the characters.



As the story Unfolds 2/3 of the way through you notice the change the director makes focusing on just one of the characters On. On's story brings the other main characters into his revenge filled mind of trying to find his fathers killer. To do this he has to find a tatooed man, that people have said could fly and talk well fighting them.

Most of the fight scene are filmed in a slighly slow motion bringing you right into the heat of the battle. The Blade is definatly not for everyone. It carries with it a lot of gore and isn't afraid to use it as a means to further character development or to make a scene more intense.

As is the case for are hero On who has his arm chopped of half way by a huge bear like trap this creating On with his hardest problem developing a new fighting style to revenge his father's death.

Vast & epic with a character drivin store is what comes to me, when trying to discribe the way I fell about this film but it does it in such a quiet way with bug crane shots long dolly tracking shots big crowds scenes where tons of thing are going on at every second. You really get to thinking just how great there Production,Custom and Set design teams are.

There resourcefulness and creative ability is just popping out of the seems with energy which give the film a high quality of realism and atmosphere. it's able to be epic but stay even more character drivin great stuff all around.

tsui hark also directed the billion once upon a time in china's and the iron monkey. I am going to have to check this one out

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"Who comes at 12:00 on a Sunday night to rent Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid?"
-Hollywood Video rental guy to me

So did you see this in a complex, or is it on VHS?

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I am Jack's smirking revenge.

I bought it on VCD for 5 bucks pretty sweet deal

you always expect big boss build up fights at the end - and whereas it's normally a climax - the broken sword spinning madness was class!

Iron monkey was directed by Woo-ping Yuen not tsui hark.

I personally think Once Upon a Time in China is a better film to the blade - although the blade is much darker...

I like your quote L.B Jefferies - croupier (didn't know many people had seen that)

Welcome to the Board Fez Wizardo


Iron Monkey

There's just something about a Robin Hood type story mixed with Kung-Fu crazyness with tons of MOON shots and guy that wears black all over and masks his face kicking @ss and runs on roof toops that gets me all geared up.

I also dig Once Upon a Time in the West, That and The Blade are very tight but I think blade just edges it out.

have you seen The Emporer and the Assassin if not I highly recommand it. It's so much in the same genre as those mentioned above, it's more like any epic slow intense poetic and strangly beautiful.

nope I haven't seen it! but i've heard good things about it... have had problems finding it to be honest but I'll keep looking...

as for audition rent it straight away - i want to know your opinion on it (expect nothing from it though!)

Easily on par with Tsui hark's best, I adore the blood soaked kung fu feast.

Featuring some of the most imagintive sword fights ever staged and stunt choreography to rival the best in the genre this film is a powerhouse from beginning to end.

The cinematography is great, really puttimng the viewer in the middle of the action. Tthe story too is engaging and interesting but the fights is why we are here, and man do they deliver.

Must see martial arts fun for fans of top notch physical feats and immersive asian cinema.

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******"The Majority Is Always Wrong" Steve Mcqueen in Enemy Of The People******

Nobody will mind if I resurrect this thread of course, since everyone who posted here is gone now. Here's my review for The Blade, I'll try not to simply repeat what has already been said but I think L.B. Jeffries covered all the important things. It's not a perfect movie, but it is a favorite of mine, and Tsui Hark's best by a little bit (Once Upon a Time in China and Time and Tide are also great). After the epic Once Upon a Time series, Tsui made this much darker martial arts film. Many people will probably not groove to it because it's so confusing. The woman who tells the story provides a rather eliptical voice-over narrative that doesn't fully grasp the images and sometimes even contradicts what you see. The splicing in of jaring cuts and multiple viewpoints inserted within the flashback structure work to enhance this dissonance, and while I think the flow of events could be paced better, the overall incoherence between sound and image has a pretty overwhelming effect. I've read that this actress petitioned Tsui to expand her role and there are times in the plot when the incoherence seems a deliberate response: an actress wanting a larger role, playing a heroine artificially bending the narrative to satisfy her sadistic whims.

The second major theme is the revenge narrative. At a point early on in the story the girl (Ling) seems intent on sparking a two way fight to the death between the orphan Ding On and Iron Head, sword makers at her father's foundry. She soon finds that she has less control over events than she thinks though, when On loses his arm after a convoluted flight, chase and rescue. From that point, the focus of the story shifts into a more traditional revenge arc that follows the crippled On as pulls himself out of his new, demeaning circumstances to finds the flying, tattooed killer who orphaned him. As I said, it's not a perfect movie, and the part that seems to put my feelings in conflict is this second leg of the film, and particularly the way it plunks down in a somewhat deterministic fashion due to the exigencies of the revenge plot rather than growing naturally. On needs to grow as a swordsman, so we get a quick montage of him training. It's a wonderfully conceived sequence, but seems over too fast, as On grows overnight from a crippled dish-boy farmer into invincible fighter.

I forgive the movie for these weaknesses though, because the visual storytelling in this movie is like nothing before or since in the swordplay genre (including Wong Kar-Wai's impressive entry of the same year, Ashes of Time). The rhythm of speeds, rapid subjective changes in the camera, and the synthesis of heavily stylized lighting and poses with spontaneous and almost arbitrary staged violence are more exaggerated than usual. The camera and editing slide deliberately between lucid restructuring of chaos and desperately grasped images in a tempest. In spite of some personal misgivings, I place this as one of the few essential-viewing action movies.