Duel to the Death

 Germany has stolen one of Hong Kong's great treasures, Ching Siu-tung, and has used him to commit great mediocrity by handing him over to Uwe Boll. Honor demands a duel between reviews; If I felt like being fair I'd choose something like Belly of the Beast for it to go against, but it's been a really long time since I've felt like rewatching any Seagal. So I'll go with the utterly amazing Duel to the Death from 1983.

 How cool is Duel to the Death? In one of the climactic fights, someone jumps out of his clothes, leaving them standing there as he ascends to the treetops. Then his head gets chopped off, flies off and gets impaled on a twig; It still has time to deliver a badass ultimatum before it fucking explodes.
 And that's it: Just a few fragments from a (much longer and full of just as awesome bits) scene and honor is restituted. It was never even a contest.

 I always feel a little apprehensive when reapproaching movies I haven't seen in years, especially ones I loved as a kid. Shouldn't have worried, though - I'm happy to report Duel to the Death is just as delightful as it ever was, a beautifully shot Wuxia epic that splits the difference between ridiculous and stately by adding extremely over-the-top dastardly ninjas to a more grounded martial arts contest for honor between Japan and China.

 The ninjas are introduced right from the get-go, infiltrating a Shaolin monastery and stealing some scrolls (I guess data theft was already a thing back then) before the monks discover them and a fight ensues. Things end up with them turning into suicide bombers, limbs flying everywhere... you know, fun.

 After this prologue we get a Japanese diplomat (Eddy Ko) on an official visit to the same temple. There he insults the monk's honour until they agree to set up a duel (to the death) between Japan's champion and China's. China's champion, Ching Wan, is played by none other than Damian Lau, while Japan's champion, Hashimoto, is played by Norman Chui.
 Ching Wan is easy-going and pleasant, Hashimoto is intense, honorable, and driven. The Chinese are constantly going on about how there may be time for a peaceful resolution, the Japanese are murderous and bloodthirsty; This is not a movie that paints the Japanese in a very favorable light, with Hashimoto as the sole honorable exception. There's a reason why all the Japanese are portrayed by Chinese actors, I guess.

 As the protagonists reach the venue for the fight, an ancient, discredited sword school run by an old master (Paul Chang Chung) and his beautiful daughter (Flora Cheong-Leen), a plot is revealed to use the duel as cover for an in my opinion pretty dishonorable ploy to humiliate China and steal their Kung-Fu secrets. It gets a little more complicated later as some corrupt Chinese accomplices are introduced, but yeah, this probably didn't play well in Japan.

 It's a busy movie, and unfortunately the storytelling is all over the place, but the plot is satisfying right up to a beautiful, ambiguous final shot. Both Ching Wan and Hashimoto are great characters, and though the often silly ninja hijinx clash a little with the (slightly) more naturalistic duel storyline, the more fantastic stuff is highly entertaining, imaginative and well-made. There are so many cool stunts and ideas in this movie: people use their swords to effectively double-jump, ninjas join together Voltron-like, into a bigger ninja, and falling leaves are used as cover for a shower of shuriken. It's a little gory, too, with quite a few dismemberments, but nothing too graphic.

 The fighting covers all bases, from more natural melee to mid-air fights that look like aerial juggles from fighting videogames. Almost all of the action involves weapons of some sort, and it's all very well directed and exciting. While the script (by the director along with David Lai and Manfred Wong) is... well, uneven, and probably won't convert anyone who's not already on-board with Chinese martial art movie conventions, it's wildly imaginative and full of good lines, cool character developments, and fun asides. I like it a lot, and it seems to me to be a bit better than these scripts usually are.
 It's also a very, very beautiful movie, with plenty of great scenery - cinematographers Danny Lee and Lau Hung-chuen do a great job of setting up a lot of varied, interesting venues for the action to take place in, their imagery crisp and very colorful. The blu-ray transfer looks amazing.

 Yeah, this is a stone-cold classic. I haven't been a huge fan of more recent Ching Siu-tung movies I've seen, even the ones not directed by Uwe Boll or starring Steven Seagal, but I really need to get around to the rest of them soon.