China, 1917. Martial artists are running around the country wreaking havoc, as they usually do - either as soldiers serving many clashing warlords, or at martial arts schools. And as we know from countless martial arts movies over the years, martial arts schools aren't any better, always challenging, stealing sacred objects, or insulting each other.
Somewhere in the countryside, a man (Yang Song) traumatized after witnessing an atrocity is given a new lease on life by the local monks - they they allow him to drop his previous life and run out into the word cleansed; The first words he hear will be his new name and identity.
As it happens, those first words are "Judge Archer!", shouted in a forest after some sort of scuffle. Our protagonist finds a wounded old man, who asks his name. When he responds "Judge Archer", the old man tells him that's his name too, and decides to take him under his wing.
Judge Archers are, as the opening blurb informed us, the people who keep all the martial arts schools in line. Cut to six years later, and the new Judge is now a powerful martial artist; We get to see him in action for a while - he can perform his job even while blind drunk - until the plot kicks in.
That plot involves Erdong (Yenny Martin), a femme fatale who convinces Judge to kill an old master (Chenghui Yu) who's thrown in with a powerful warlord. Judge (is it ok if I use his first name?) proves he's not being seduced into doing it by literally fighting off her advances in the bedchamber (an amazing and dryly funny fight where the main weapons end up being a length of string, a pair of knives and a chair), and then agrees to her request anyways.
Things end up being even more complicated than they seem at first (which is plenty complicated) when a beautiful opera singer (Chengyuan Li) keeps interrupting Judge's attempts on the old man's life until he falls in love with her.
It's a confusing, frustratingly obtuse story that keeps everybody's motivations cryptic. I'm used to just rolling with Wuxia storylines without fully understanding them, but it's especially frustrating here because you get the feeling that there's a well thought-out story full of interesting themes, sitting tantalizingly half-out of reach. It does make sense, mostly, by the end, but there's plenty of bewildering choices, hindered no doubt by cultural distance.
On the other hand, the movie looks absolutely sumptuous. Director Xu Haofeng has an incredible eye for visuals and tying scenes together in a very compelling way; He also writes, edits and does all the choreography, which is a really impressive list of credits given how well it's all done. The art direction (by Yong Xie) and cinematography (by Tony Wang) are beautiful, and the wardrobe (by Tingting Liang) looks amazing. The film easily earns a ton of goodwill by virtue of just how good it looks and sounds (the music, by Wei An and Fan Wang, is also fantastic).
And the acting is good. Judge Archer is a damaged weirdo prone to strange pauses, but he's a convincing, very charismatic damaged weirdo. Kuang is a great villain, believably capable and equally likeable, and both of the women are very good as well, although their roles are the most inscrutable.
It's a thoughtful film full of quiet moments, punctuated by frequent and very cool, very varied fights. There's a series of close-up duels which have people sitting on benches, right on front of each other with their knees almost touching, relying a lot on elbows and the insides of the forearms. Other fights use the aforementioned piece of string, arrows wielded as wands, and pole fights that turn into spear fights when the combatants sharpen the tips by tapping them on a hard object. A lot of attention is paid to footwork, which is something I adore in these movies.
All great stuff, much less flamboyant than most wuxia but still a tiny bit heightened and very imaginative.
Set against the rise of the Chinese republic and the ensuing wane of martial arts ("there won't be another Judge Archer", someone says), the story and its themes are quietly affecting- especially when we learn of the fate of the Judge's sister, the catalyst that set the whole story into motion, and compare them to see how their lives diverged.
Xu Haofeng is serious about all this stuff: he's a researcher into martial arts and its role in history, a well-known novelist in China, probably most famous here in the west for being one of the writers behind Kar-Wai Wong's The Grandmaster. He's appeared once in this blog already, as the writer of the novel Monk Comes Down the Mountain is based off; given just how good Judge Archer is, he will absolutely appear again.
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