SEVEN SWORDS REVIEW

Tsui Hark has made the most interesting movie so far about the insurgency in Iraq, and I'm surprised no one else is talking about it. SEVEN SWORDS is so clearly a movie about the US invasion of Iraq, and a celebration of the insurgents who are fighting back, that I'd be surprised if it could even get an American distribution deal. I'm not trying to suddenly make this movie unmarketable, but I really did think that there's no way to argue that 7 SWORDS is about anything else.

Check this out for a plot: the Emperor is worried about weapons of mass destruction (ie, martial arts) being used against him and so he declares that no one but his soldiers can study martial arts. He sends his army, clad in clunky body armor and wielding exotic weapons, out into the rocky, inhospitable desert to conduct raids on villages where it's rumored martial artists lurk. There's massive collateral damage as the baddies wipe out women and children along with the insurgents. Then, out of the mountains of Tora Bora...oops, I mean Mount Tian, come seven swordsmen who are pure of heart and soul. They engage with the superior invading forces and beat them through a combination of super skills and booby traps. Later they have to hide refugees in mountain caves and the Emperor's army bombard them with artillery. Within the ranks of the insurgents there are people from the previous dynasty who served as the Emperor's torturers, now making an uneasy peace with their former victims as they fight back against the invaders, there are collaborators, traitors, and foreign fighters. Maybe there's too much Newsweek in my diet, but this sounds so much like the situation in Iraq that I can't imagine Tsui didn't intend parallels.

But maybe all this is just some fever dream fantasy I concocted to keep myself occupied while watching 7 SWORDS, because there wasn't a lot onscreen to do it for me. It's not a bad movie, but it's a deeply unsatisfying one. With 7 SWORDS and seven swordsmen to wield them you'd think that Tsui would have his hands full trying to keep the characters straight but instead the movie is really about: a) an old horse; b) a Korean slave; c) a kid who has to learn to stand up for himself d) a village that has to learn not to be too judgemental and it isn't until we get past those four plot points that we get to e) seven swordsmen.

The original cut was 4 hours long, and I'd be interested to see it, but so much of what I did see had a "been there, seen that" vibe that I'm not sure two more hours will help. The bad guy, Fire Wind (no indigestion jokes, please), is played with relish, and mustard, and sauerkraut and all the gooey fixins' by Sun Honglei, and he's a blast, but the other actors are not so tasty. Leon Lai plays a guy who sounds like a fortune cookie every time he opens his mouth. Donnie Yen does strong dark and silent. Lau Kar-leung is poorly dubbed and he's barely onscreen in the second half of the movie. Xiong Xin-xin reprises his clubfoot role from ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA 2. Everyone else is interchangeable. Even the climactic action scene is thrilling until you remember that it was done bigger (and better?) back at the end of ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA 2 (with Donnie Yen as well, no less). 

The 4 hour version may not make a better movie but it could go a long way towards explaining the geography. Much is made of the advance of Fire Wind's army on the peaceful village ("Eek! They're 300 hundred miles away!"), but suddenly it turns out that the village is a four hour pony ride from the bad guy's giant fortress. Fast ponies, I guess. Even after the villagers flee, it still doesn't take more than a couple of hours to get back to Fort Bad Guy from wherever they are, which is weak tea from a director who's always had a firm grip on the spatial relationships in his movies.

The one person who should be lobbying to keep the 4 hour version out of stores is Michael Wong. Hong Kong's favorite white man has a decent cameo as The Duke, but less is always more with the good Mr. Wong and another 10 minutes of his role may ruin the magic.