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Released by: Crash Cinema
Released on: 3/13/2007
Director: Poon Lui
Cast: Wang Yu, Chan Pooi-Ling, Wang Lai, Got Heung Ting, Lee Kwan
Year: 1971
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The Movie:
Made in 1971 in Taiwan and (if the on screen credits are anything to go by) distributed by Mercury Audio Visual Enterprises of San Francisco, California, The Sword is an interesting tale of a nobleman and the somewhat literal love affair he has with his weapon. Shot in Taiwan, it features some nice scenery, some fantastic fight scenes, and a very solid performance from Jimmy Wang Yu (of The Chinese Boxer and Master Of The Flying Guillotine) in the lead.
Wang Yu plays a young nobleman, part of a very wealthy family of some influence in the area where he's grown up. He's a bit of a spoiled little rich kid, but the king wants to win his favor as Wang Yu and his cohorts are really the only opposition he has to worry about. To get in good with Wang Yu, he decides to host a martial arts tournament where the winner will be awarded one of the most amazing swords ever made. Knowing that Wang Yu has an affinity for swords, he figures he'll attend and the king is right. He not only attends, he takes home the prize and adds it to his considerable collection. Unfortunately, Wang Yu isn't overly impressed with the quality of the sword he's won and this sets him out on a quest to get the best sword ever made. He tracks down a reclusive old man who supposedly owns the best blade in the land and he makes it his mission to take it from him, but the old man isn't going to go down without a fight. Wang Yu's skills aren't on par with the old man and so he goes off to train in hopes of bettering himself and finally besting the weird old guy so that he can win the sword that he now obsesses over.
The first half of the film moves a little slowly, but have no fear as it all culminates with a pissed off and grizzled looking Wang Yu outdoors in the snow and ready to do what he knows he has to do. Wang Yu is great in his role, and he does a fine job of showing us through his performance how intense his obsession with his sword is getting as the movie progresses. He cares more about his swords than he does about anything else - women, his friends, money - you name it, and Wang Yu will tell you he likes swords better.
All the elements of a good martial arts film are here - over the top fight scenes, the requisite melodrama, an unusual hero and some equally odd villains. A few familiar musical cues can be heard in the movie and the sound effects for the swordplay scenes are completely bombastic, just as you'd want them to be. Parts of the score are insanely catchy and used constantly, but that's all right, they're nifty pieces of music.
It's obvious that the production team took some time to work on the costumes and the sets, as there's a lot of detail throughout the movie, more so than you might expect and the production values here are certainly above average. In the end, The Sword turns out to be an exciting and visually very strong film with some solid fights and plenty of Wang Yu action. There's even an unexpected musical interlude just before the big twist at the end!
Video/Audio/Extras:
Surprisingly enough, the transfer for The Sword is 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen (although watching it on a computer monitor will probe that the picture is slightly windowboxed within the widescreen frame), which looks to be the proper aspect ratio for the film. Regardless, for an older and genuinely obscure marital arts movie, The Sword doesn't look too bad on this DVD. The first few minutes are fairly rough and they certainly show more print damage and more debris than you might hope for but at around the ten minutes mark things start to clean up a bit. While it's obvious that there hasn't been a complete frame-by-frame restoration done here (understandably, as that would cost a small fortune) Crash appears to have done some color correction and a bit of clean up work on the elements that they had to work with which, let's face it, obviously weren't in very good shape to start with. Those accustomed to watching older martial arts films shouldn't have a problem with the way that the film is presented here. It's far from pristine, but it certainly could have looked a lot worse and the film is here in its proper aspect ratio taken from a film print and not a worn out, soft VHS source.
The film arrives on DVD in its original Chinese language in Dolby Digital Mono with both English and Chinese subtitles burnt into the print. This is certainly the biggest strike against the disc as the subs are a little tough to read at times and during the brighter scenes in the movie they blend into the background quite a bit. Ideally Crash would have put a black bar over the burned in subs and supplied new ones in its place the way that Cult Epics did on their three-disc release of The Beast, but that didn't happen. Thankfully, most of the time the subs are reasonably legible and that plot isn't all that difficult to follow. Better subs sure would have helped but those who want to see the film shouldn't let this stop them from checking it out.
Although the packaging states that the trailer for the film is included, sadly that is not the case. Crash has included trailers for two other Crash Masters DVD releases (Knight Of Old Cathay and Beautiful Swordswoman), however, so the disc isn't completely barebones. Menus and chapter stops are also included. Inside the keepcase is a small insert containing a printed advertisement for other titles in the Crash Masters series of releases.
The Final Word:
The extras are slim and the audio and video quality are far from perfect but The Sword is a pretty solid swordplay film with a fine performance from Wang Yu and some pretty killer action scenes. Crash has likely done the best they can with the elements available and it's nice to have the film in its original aspect ratio and in what appears to be an unedited version. Fans of older martial arts movies will certainly want to check this one out.