Tsui Hark’s Seven Swords (Chat gim)

A good fantasy martial arts film staring Donnie Yen, it’s about seven warriors coming together to defeat an evil General, Fire-Wind, who is plaguing village after village by killing it’s inhabitants for a bounty set on the practitioners of martial arts. But the General is taking things to far and killing woman and children too.

Retired executioner Fu Qingzhu has seen the wrong he has done and has repented his ways and thwarts Fire-Winds efforts the best one man can, after being wounded after an encounter with his troops, Fu Qingzhu reaches the Martial Village and warns them that Fire-Wind and his troops are close but they are only interested in executing him for his past crimes.

But Fu Qingzhu has an unlikely ally in the village in the leaders daughter who convinces two others to take Fu Qingzhu away from the village and to find help to save their village, and they find, and join, warriors and they would become known as The Seven Swords

I don’t know that much about Asian Cinema and I’ve only watched one other Tsui Hark film, Vampire Hunters, Seven Swords is much better than that one. This movie was just okay to me, when a movie like this is done, where a group of heroes are banded together, you expect some kind of back story on how they’re found, but it seemed like they just suddenly appeared together, three of them already traveling together having found Fu Qingzhu and the two villagers. And Donnie Yen’s character was meditating inside a mountain and broke through when called upon, which was kind of cool. But still the movie was already 2 hrs and 34 mins, they could added an extra 30 minutes for some kind of coming together sequence.

The effects and martial arts choreography were pretty good, I’ve seen Donnie Yen in a few other movies and he is always good, as are all the actors in the movie as long as you don’t watch the dubbed version, the actors who did the voice overs were not that great.

At the end of the film the heroes ride off into the sunset, a little broken, a little bloody, and a little heartbroken, but they’re heroes and they’ll survive and press on, because that’s what heroes do.

A little note on the movie, I’ve seen some reviews say that this movie was based on the western The Magnificent Seven, that’s just plain wrong, The Magnificent Seven was based on the classic Samurai movie Seven Samurai, and though I haven’t seen anything official I would guess that Seven Sword is loosely based on Seven Samurai.

Kenji Kawai - Seven Swords’ Victory from the Original Soundtrack.

Sub-Titled Trailer Here.