THE BLADE (1995)
Directed by: Tsui Hark
Starring: Chiu Man-cheuk, Song Nei, Xiong Xin-xin, Moses Chan Ho, Austin Wai, Valerie Chow, Ngai Sing

The jiang hu (or, as the subtitles in The Blade call it, "emprise field") is the martial world, closed off from outside interference it has its own laws, its own morals, it exacts its own price on its inhabitant's souls, it eats its own young, it cannot be joined lightly, it cannot be left by the living. The law of the Wild West would be our nearest equivalent, but the jiang hu (literally “rivers and lakes”) was a stricter, darker code of conduct that established laws for the people who lived between towns, the ones who lived outside civilization: beggars, thieves, traveling actors, wandering swordsmen. Every action demands a reaction, every death demands revenge, every insult demands satisfaction. The jiang hu covers the earth like a flood, a deluge of black, brackish water where everyone is spattered with its sin, where no one is clean, where animals look like people and talk like people, and walk like people, but they have no souls. The strong take, the weak die.

Floating on its scum-encrusted surface, like Noah's ark, is the sword factory, Sharp Manufacturers, a resting place from the incessant violence raging outside its walls. But the Master of Sharp's Manufacturers daughter is getting bored and she's beginning to play with the help, manipulating them into a contest for her affection. She picks On (Chiu Man-cheuk) and Iron Head (Moses Chan) and sets them against one another in a battle of the wills. But when you let the violence in you can't let it in just a little, and soon it all comes flooding over the walls as Lung (Xiong Xin-xin) enters the picture. "I kill pigs for money," he hisses, mouth full of shark's teeth. And he flies. And he's fast. And he murdered On's father. Once On knows this there's no stopping the chaos and blood that comes down from the heavens as he destroys everyone around him in his quest for revenge.

Rapid cutting, berserker camera movement, frenetic choreography and compositions packed to bursting with rhythm, texture and detail, Tsui Hark's revved-up ancient China roars away from the viewer like an out-of-control freight train, never saying what can be shown, never showing what can be said. Brains and eyeballs are battered and bruised in Tsui's return to the helm, and the audience has to run to keep up, but the experience of seeing one of the world's best directors at the top of his game is indescribably ecstatic.

And it almost never happened. Two weeks into filming The Blade, lead actress Song Nei came up to the director and said, "Why am I here?" This flummoxed Tsui Hark and he started to explain her contract to her. "No," she said, "why am I here? I'd rather go home. Anyone can do my part it's not very interesting." Stunned, Tsui Hark realized she was right. Her part wasn't very interesting. And so, in an only-in-Hong-Kong moment, he sent everyone home for 24 hours while he re-wrote the script. Now she was at the center of the movie, everything seen through her eyes. The cast and crew reconvened, got their new pages, and a feral masterpiece was born.

It's also a remake of Chang Cheh's 1967 classic, One-Armed Swordsman, starring Jimmy Wang Yu. Cheh's film was the first of the heroic swordsman movies and it set industry-wide standards for the depiction of martial chivalry and ultraviolence. It's way up there in the Hong Kong cinema canon in the position that High Noon has amongst westerns. In The Blade Tsui Hark has a lot of fun squeezing its little body between his tweezers and pulling off its wings.

With production design by Wong Kar-wai's designer and editor, William Chang, it's a psychotronic phantasmagoria full of scars and tattoos, mutilation, amputation, sexual frustration, and sharp, heavy chunks of pig iron splitting muscle and breaking bones. The characters don't fly, as they do in Swordsman 1 and 2, instead they have both feet planted in the mud, their flying replaced by a startling supernatural speed that is all the more awe-inspiring for the athleticism it requires. Xiong Xin-xin has said that The Blade is his favorite movie because they used no wires when they made it. Those leaps and whirls are unassisted. Try not to turn green with envy.

Every film in this retrospective is good, and all of them display Tsui Hark at his best. But missing out on The Blade is like missing out on the wildest ride at the fair. It's unavailable on DVD, and it won't be playing a multiplex near you anytime soon. Seeing it on the big screen is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Don't let this mad carnival pass you by.

NOTE: During one of our screenings of this movie, the projectionist got so caught up in the final fight that he missed a reel change, plunging the screen into darkness, and causing the audience to riot. It’s a testament to the power of this film that a projectionist with 30 years of experience, who’s seen it all, could get so caught up that he forgets to do his job.