Reign of Assassins (Jianyu Jianghu)

 The Dark Stone gang, a powerful group of assassins, is after the remains of an the ancient Buddhist monk Bodhi in the belief that the corpse would give its bearer fancy martial arts powers. The bastards kill the possessor of the corpse and his son in cold blood, but one of the assassins - the beautiful Xi Yu (Kelly Lin) - out-assholes them all and flees with the top half of the corpse.

 While on the lam, she meets a roving monk called Wisdom. It's unclear whether the relationship is romantic (Wisdom does eventually confess to have a crush), but they spend three months training before Xi Yu kills him during a lesson when she loses her cool. Distraught, she takes his dying advice and decides to honour him by never killing anyone else.

 And so she travels to a doctor who operates (heh) out of a houseboat, and asks him to give her a new face so she can start a new life. I should note plastic surgery in Jianghu - the martial arts world - involves poison, flesh-eating insects working from the inside out, and gold thread; Just one more reason why we love wuxia.

 And thus Xi Yu transforms into Zeng Jing (Michelle Yeoh) and starts a new civilian life as a cloth merchant; She soon meets Ah-sheng (Jung Woo-sung), a humble courier, and they marry.
 Their placid life is briefly interrupted when they are both caught in a bank robbery; When it turns ugly she single-handedly foils the kung-fu-powered robbers and is outed as a badass, Ah-sheng's reaction? 'I don't care if you were a brigand, now you're my wife.' Loving and slightly demeaning, but I think that's just the translation - it's supposed to be romantic.

 The attack at the bank draws the attention of the rest of the Black Stone Gang, who have replaced Xi Yu with Turquoise (the recently late Barbie Hsu). The leader, The Wheel King (Wang Xueqi) performs something I always enjoy: Kung-fu forensics, and uses it to determine that the person who defeated the robbers could be no one but Xi Yu.
 The assassins face off again, and the stray swordswoman is coerced to retrieve both halves of the ancient monk's body for team evil. Assassins gonna reign, or something. Which of course leads to a few surprises, a lot of fights, and melodrama to spare.

 The script, by main director Su Chao-pin, is fairly sloppy; there are many contrivances, unnecessary scenes, and the all-important MacGuffin which drives the action is oddly relegated to the background and eventually forgotten.

 But the thrust of the story is powerful, and as forward momentum accumulates, disparate elements that had been previously established come together in highly satisfying/entertaining ways. For all the script's problems, it can be pretty clever, and its entry-level use of Buddhist philosophy can even be seen as wisdom, if you look at it from the appropriate angle and with enough goodwill.

 The story is also full of odd, cool touches and excellent acting. Many characters, including the villains, get splashes of backstory that give them a lot of colour, and there's a sense of humour about the movie that makes it very likeable. It's a good one.

 There are plenty of interesting martial arts on display; Things like Xi Yu fighting with a thin, flexible blade that bends to strike targets from an unexpected angle (kind of like the way flails were supposed to curve over shields), or a magician (Leon Dai) who uses flaming swords.

 The problem is that the director does not shoot the action cleanly; The edits are short, and the camera often too close to the actors. It's not bad, exactly: The fights are easy enough to read, and they clearly prioritize making the cast look good and showcasing cool moments; In that, the director succeeds. But the scenes don't flow well, and I was often frustrated at the choppy quality of the combat as the edits jumped from one beat to the next, often completely changing angles. This break with Hong Kong tradition is especially galling because they had John Woo in an advisory capacity for enough time that he's billed as a co-director.

 And yet... I can't be disappointed with a movie that begins with a single assassin fighting and killing a whole kung-fu family, starting with their very young son. In self-defense, no less!

 Elsewhere the film looks very good. The cinematography (Wikipedia lists five cinematographers) is good, and the editing style, while it takes some getting used to, gives it a sort of elegant, flowing quality.

 This is one of the rare wuxia movies where the story far outshines the action. The cast is gifted, the wire-work is great, and the choreographies are excellent and have plenty of cool moves... it's a shame that we can't enjoy all of that properly. Other than that and some storytelling glitches, it's an excellent wuxia tale: enthralling, often funny, and surprisingly sweet.