Since Tsui Hark’s The Blade was interesting in many ways I thought I’d give more recent film a shot. This was reasonably well received in Asia and boasts of a star-studded cast. Unfortunately this is terrible film in all respects and it is difficult to find even a single saving grace in it. The plot is comprehensible enough even if there are inexplicable jumps here and there but it is just dumb and none of the performers in it acquit themselves well. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, Tsui himself most of all.

The emperor of China, fearing rebellion, has decreed that the practice of martial arts is banned and all who violate the edict must be executed. A warlord Fire-Wind happily enforces the edict in exchange for bounties and his next target is a village of many martial artists. Fu Qingzhu, an executioner of the previous dynasty and now repentant tries to save the village. Injured, he has two of the villagers take him to Mount Heaven where a reclusive swordsmith grants each of them a sword. They are joined by his four disciples and together these Seven Swords descend the mountain to protect the village. After driving away the initial attack, the heroes strike at Fire-Wind’s base and rescue Fire-Wind slave girl who turns out to be Korean. This starts a subplot involving the eldest and most powerful of the disciples Chu Zhaonan who is Korean as well.

This is a rather long film but it was originally much longer as the first cut submitted was four hours long. I suppose this explains why the plot jumps around here and there and why there are so many subplots that feel perfunctory and don’t really go anywhere. It tries to give each hero a bit of a backstory and some character development, as well something of a love triangle. But you can tell that they must have cut a lot out as it mostly just goes nowhere. It would have been better to just cut some parts out entirely, such the daughter of the village head being attracted to Chu as well. The main plot for that matter is pretty dumb as well as the heroes keep doing stupid things such as leaving the villagers completely undefended to attack Fire-Wind or even abandoning their horses to go hide in a cave. I can’t believe that the ending is even considered a victory considering how few villages are left and why is a village consisting of martial arts practitioners so helpless against a single infiltrator? This is dumbness stacked on top of dumbness all the way down.

Even if the plot is stupid at least in films like this you usually have at least some nice photography to look at and some decent martial arts action. Unfortunately this is not the case at all as the production actually looks cheap and is far inferior to the films that are coming out of China. The martial arts choreography is bad as it’s trying to convey how each sword has its own tricks and powers so the focus is on close-ups rather than the movement of the whole body. The acting is atrocious all around. Donnie Yen does nothing but glower the whole time, Leon Lai keeps his face passively neutral no matter how awful the situation. Charlie Yeung fumbles her way through speaking Mandarin and Sun Honglei overacts and hams it up as the villain Fire-Wind. The overall impression is that Tsui just doesn’t care and is just letting everyone do whatever they want. Strangely enough, the most emotive moment in the film is probably when one of the seven releases a beloved horse to the wild as part of their plan to evade the forces pursuing them and it’s just some irrelevant detail that doesn’t pertain to the main plot at all.

This film seems doomed from the start being clearly meant to be part of a series that never materialized. It’s just trying to do too much with an emphasis on quantity over quality. At the same time, it’s hard to believe that a director of Tsui’s reputation would let himself go like this and release work that shows how he just doesn’t care any more. The whole thing feels phoned in and banks only on the star power of its cast. Even the inclusion of the Korean actress Kim So-yeon seems like a half-hearted attempt to cash in on the popularity of Korean culture at the time. There’s no reason whatsoever to watch this as it is just that bad and is a horrible indictment of the state of Hong Kong cinema.