Anything that Yuen Woo-ping's worked on is probably worth watching, according to this Asian film fan. From countless Hong Kong action films, wuxia epics, and Western productions, Yuen Woo-ping has brought his talents for action choreography to so many things we've loved that folks sometimes forget he's a director too. His latest, Blades of the Guardians is out in select theaters now.
Mixing history and visceral action sequences, Blades of the Guardians tells the tale of rival clans in the Sui Dynasty. If you guessed that there'd be sword fights, daring rescues, and scenic vistas, you'd be right. The film is both epic in scale and reasonably modest in terms of the central character arcs.
Wu Jing (Sha Po Lang, Wolf Warrior) is Dao Ma, a bodyguard/escort who's tasked with escorting the most wanted criminal in China across dangerous terrain. The masked Zhi Shilang (Sun Yizhou) is that prisoner, and it seems as if everyone is out to capture the man. Pursued by rivals, outlaws, and mercenaries, Dao Ma is accompanied by his nephew after rescuing the child during an earlier battle (shown in flashbacks at one point). Shades of Lone Wolf and Cub? Sure, but this film is more interested in Dao Ma's travails and less so in the story of how Dao Ma became a guardian to a child.
An early sequence features a brief appearance from Jet Li as the governor of the territory who assigns Dao Ma his task. It's a shame he's not in the film more, but his presence links this to past collaborations with Yuen Woo-ping as both director (Fist of Legend) and action choreographer (Once Upon a Time in China, Black Mask, and on and on).
There's a neat segment in an inn where Dao Ma reveals his skills with weaponry, and some of the enemies are revealed. Hong Kong cinema mainstay Nicholas Tse is Diting, another guard who's got a past with Dao Ma. The scenes with both Wu Jing and Nic Tse are the higlights of the film for fans of this kind of thing. Tse has grown into a decent presence on screen, one able to finally convey the gravitas that he couldn't quite bring as a pretty young actor twenty or so years ago.
Once on the road with his prisoner in tow, Dao Ma is linked up with Ayuya, played nicely by the Chinese Opera-trained Chen Lijun. Her father, the chief of the Mojia clan, compels Dao Ma to take the woman with him, and she more than proves her worth as a warrior later in the film. Tony Leung Ka-fai has the role of that clan leader of the bucolic-but-threatened Mojia village, and he turns in a reasonably nice performance, though he's saddled with a lot of makeup.
As you can imagine, the group encounters dangers on the journey, with every manner of outlaw, bandit, or rival gang out to get the prisoner and kill Dao Ma. A set piece where the band faces off against a troupe of marksmen is shot nicely on a wide open desert plain, and it's the sort of thing that not only links back to wuxia epics of the past, but also John Ford westerns. A later battle in a sandstorm makes pulses pound by keeping the action moving in unexpected ways, with a judicious use of CGI. It's a neat sequence and one where director Yuen Woo-ping keeps things pitched at a level that's not too over-the-top as he favors here in Blades of the Guaridans a very physical style of fighting. For a film with some wire-work, this is a rather grounded action flick in some ways.
The plot takes so many twists and turns that it would be a fool's errand to try to summarize all of them. I'll say that the familiar beats of this kind of genre effort are here, and there were enough echoes of past Sixties and Seventies wuxia epics that this fan was really happy watching Blades of the Guardians. Part of the fun is actually connecting set-pieces here in this one with those in older epics like Come Drink With Me and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to use two obvious examples.
Blades of the Guardians retains a vitality that was missing from some more recent efforts of a similar mold, like Tsui Hark's Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. Yuen Woo-ping uses a sure hand here to keep things moving, and semi-believable. Whatever 'wire fu' you find here is rather modestly deployed. The action scenes are magnificent, and expertly choreographed, but not once did the action take me out of the story. In that way, Blades of the Guardians seemed similar to Tsui Harks' underrated Seven Swords. With a slate of characters sharply defined, and with competing motivations and backgrounds, Blades of the Guardians refines the tradtions of the wuxia film with a deft blend of real history and fantastical action.
Blades of the Guardians is out now from Well Go USA.
[Photos: Well Go USA]