SWORDSMAN (1990)
Directed by: Tsui Hark, King Hu, Ann Hui, Ching Siu-tung, Andew Kam, Raymond Lee
Starring: Sam Hui, Cecilia Yip, Jacky Cheung, Sharla Cheung, Fennie Yuen, Yuen Wah, Wu Ma, Lam Ching-ying
Chaos, betrayal, double crosses, near disaster, last-minute rescues, old teachers who can’t take the heat, young turks battling for their place in the world…and that’s just the behind-the-scenes story of Swordsman!
Adapted from a Jin Yong novel, Tsui wanted to rejuvenate the wu xia (flying swordsman) movie from the gloomy, gothic studio-bound Shaw Brothers productions that had come to define the genre. He turned to the man who most effectively brought wu xia to the big screen, King Hu, and together they spent a year on the script, conceptualizing a colorful, frenetic world with a vast scope full of warring clans, stolen martial arts scrolls, and location shooting to bring a sense of grandeur and scale. Tsui had ventured into this territory years previously with his groundbreaking flop Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) and refined it with his hit A Chinese Ghost Story (1987).
Hu started filming but his health, already bad, got worse fast and he had to step off the production (only a few of his exterior shots from the beginning of the film remain). His acolyte, Ann Hui, then a prominent New Wave director, stepped in, while Ching Siu-tung handled action. When Tsui got back from shooting The Master (1992, it sat on the shelf for a while) with Jet Li in Los Angeles, he was worried about the pace of production since pop superstars Sally Yeh and Sam Hui’s schedules were almost finished. Tsui brought in Raymond Lee and Andrew Kam and shot the rest of the movie in a whirlwind of productivity.
Watching it now there’s so much overdubbing and voiceover in even the first few minutes that you realize this is a Franken-movie constructed out of repurposed parts. It starts in some of King Hu’s favorite locations like an imperial palace hidden in the mountains, an isolated inn, and a bamboo forest, but soon we’re in Tsui’s world of smoky, blue-lit nighttime forests. Yet, like Frankenstein’s monster, lightning animates this film and gives it an energy that a movie with a less tortured production history would lack. The character and costume designs, from King Hu’s meticulous research, are gorgeous, and the same sense of fatalistic doom hangs over all the frenetic swordplay like the smoke hanging in the sky from all the burning corpses.
The movie revolves around the MacGuffin of a stolen martial arts scroll, with a superpowered butt-kicking eunuch sent to retrieve it (played by Lau Shun, a Peking opera ace who doubled a lot of the other actors for their action scenes). He frames a retired official for the crime, and lays siege to his villa. The official calls for help from the Wah Mountain school and Ling (Sam Hui) and Kiddo (Cecilia Yip) show up to assist. What follows is a head-spinning whirl of betrayals and double crosses as the Sun Moon Sect and many more get involved and it turns out that, as always, the younger generation is being sold out by their masters.
One of the bloodier Tsui Hark movies, it’s anchored by the charm of the cast, like Sam Hui who may not be a martial artist but he can find the smile in someone’s brains exploding all over the room. Jacky Cheung, in pink lip gloss won his second “Best Supporting Actor” trophy at the Hong Kong Film Awards for his role, and everything moves so fast that the movie leaps plot holes before anyone has a chance to notice them.
The movie launched a new wu xia boom and proved to be a big hit, even though it didn’t earn enough to make back its overinflated budget which grew to HK$30 million amidst all the reshooting and dubbing. It paved the way for a sequel, but all the actors were too expensive so Tsui replaced them all except for Fennie Yuen’s Blue Phoenix. It’s hard to believe but at the time, Sam Hui and Jacky Cheung were more expensive than Jet Li, Brigitte Lin, and Rosamund Kwan.
Anchoring the movie and giving a sense of melancholy grandeur to the hyperkinetic action is composer James Wong’s song “Hero of Heroes.” A battle between Tsui and Wong over the song ensued with the director making his composer rewrite it six times. On the copy of the seventh version that Wong sent to Tsui he drew a penis, the implication being that Tsui could accept it or go fuck himself, but he was done.
The seas laugh, lashing both shores
Carried in the waves, we have only the here and now.
The heavens laugh at the troubled world
Only they know who is to win and lose.
The mountains laugh, the rain is afar
When the waves grow old, the world still goes on.
The light wind laughs
brings along with lonesome
Shadows fall on my sleeves
there is nothing but naked passion.
The heavens laugh, lonesome leaves
But bitter smile remains.