The Cinematheque

“Tsui’s most underrated movie … [He] depicts kung fu fighting less as a graceful subset of gymnastics than as a form of manual labour, with slow-motion tableaux of muscular combatants reminiscent of social realism.”

David Chute, Film Comment

Tsui Hark’s genre revisionism was never more extreme than in The Blade, a raw stylistic departure that takes Chang Cheh’s The One-Armed Swordsman as its mythic departure point. As with all of Tsui’s films, the guiding idea is sharp and clear: if situated in a realistic environment of war and combat, the ideals of martial arts might look less balletic and more like a lawless portrait of horrific danger and loss. The film is narrated by Ling (Song Lei), whose pull of desire pits two metalsmiths against one another until village games are swept away by the chaos of invasion and the irreparable, merciless physics of bear traps, spikes, and the film’s title weapon. Vincent Zhao (Green Snake) plays the hero, but Tsui isn’t interested in a standard odyssey. The director employs a rapidly cut, handheld approach that hurls the genre’s typical rewards—of combat as a refined tradition—into an extended nighttime maelstrom of abandoned souls. Tsui also edits. Sally Yeh sings the end-credits song.

In Cantonese with English subtitles

Advisory: The Blade includes a scene of sexual violence.

“Everything in The Blade is bent toward heightening one emotion: ferocity. It is nightmarishly raw not just in its incidents, but also in its style … A phantasmagoric world ruled by agony and aggression.”

David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong