A gang of ruthless criminals led by Jade-Faced Tiger (Chan Hung-lit) ambush a government convoy as they cross some beautiful rolling hills, aiming to set their leader free. Their target ends up not being there, but they take the governor's son as a hostage instead.
Back in their temple hideout, they send out runners to tell the governor that unless their leader is released, they will kill his son in five days. As they set out to wait, nervous whispers spread among their number of the menace of the governor's hidden blade, a ruthless law enforcer called Golden Swallow. This prompts Jade-Faced Tiger, who wasn't aware of this menace, to say: "I'd like to meet him".
Cut to a lone woman (Cheng Pei-pei) making her way to an inn during a thunderstorm. Once she arrives there, a number of the bandits clear out the locals and slowly circle around her while she remains perfectly poised. Jade-Faced Tiger's second-in-command (Lee Wan-chung, always smiling) sits down with her, recognizing her as the governor's emissary, but she refuses to negotiate, insisting instead that the bandits turn themselves in.
Thus follows a crazily good (and extremely influential) scene where a series of fights break out at the Inn as the Bandits test this mysterious woman... who of course turns out to be none other than Golden Swallow. At first they attack her "covertly" by "serving" her a jug of wine (throwing it at her head), or saying that they'll pay for it hurling coins at her like shuriken (which she catches with a chopstick; Seriously, this scene is so cool). When she foils them they come at her overtly with swords and throwing knives, and she easily fights them off by wounding each of them in their right hands. The fight is overtly stylized, but the camera tracks everything beautifully and Cheng's balletic style looks great on camera, if unconvincing as a credible fighting style.
And the next scene, with all the bandits sitting around a table with their hands bandaged, is the perfect gag to cap it off. I can't overstate just how good this is. A stone-cold classic character introduction.
It didn't even register that she's disguised as a man until they start referring to her as a 'he' - and even then, I wasn't sure if that was the case or if they were making fun of her for being a tomboy. She's later 'outed' when she visits the temple in dress, but this is a very overt reminder of the cultural distance that these films have for me; Part of it is the stylization, part of it is being used to women dressing in more masculine clothes (her outfit here looks pretty unisex to my modern gaze) but come on, I could never buy anyone could possibly mistake her for a man, especially after hearing her talk.
No matter. Golden Swallow harries the bandits, increasingly leaning on the help of handsome local beggar Drunken Cat (Yueh Hua). But she takes on more than she can handle when she tries to confront all of them at an excellent temple showdown (for my money, the most exciting fight in the movie), and Drunken Cat saves her and takes her to his secret hideout (a beautiful secluded forest cabin soundstage) to nurse her back to health... revealing himself to be a kung fu master in the process.
This is where the film pivots, turning Golden Swallow's story into a side-story as the main plot turns out to be one of those martial arts school beefs between Drunken Cat and the corrupt abbot (Yeung Chi-hing) of the temple the bandits are holed in.
As soon as kung fu masters are introduced late in a story, that's it; They'll suck up all the air in the room. It's as if Dirty Harry had a sidekick that suddenly turned out to be a superhero; it's all but impossible for the roles not to be suddenly inverted.
It's a disappointing development, but the film survives it. Golden Swallow becomes a deuteragonist, but she still gets a chance to shine and her story is (mostly) resolved in a satisfactory way. More importantly, Drunken Cat is an engaging character in his own right, and his story is pretty cool too. The script (by King Hu and Ting Shan-hsi) keeps the two storylines thematically linked with an emphasis on honour and forgiveness.
As with most early wuxia I've seen, the fights prioritize stylization over realism, and the editing sometimes looks a little off, but technically they're all extremely accomplished. The combat is varied, well choreographed, and full of fun moves and touches (I love how someone falls into water in the foreground not once, but twice - causing exaggerated splashes to come from off-camera). It's often brutal, with the big battles getting surprisingly bloody.
The scenery is also varied but always very colorful (cinematography: Tadashi Nishimoto) and it features some lovely on-location shooting and the sort of elaborate soundstages I adore in these movies. Most importantly, despite some abrupt cuts, the action is crystal clear, with the camera always perfectly positioned to capture everything in an engaging way. It looks so good, with so many cool shots, that narrowing all the captures I took of this to just two was difficult.
This - the last movie Hu would make with the Shaw Brothers - is widely considered one of the best Wuxia movies. I not going to argue; Golden Swallow's introduction alone will ensure this one sticks with me for a long time. And it's impossible to to overstate how influential it would become.
No comments:
Post a Comment