I watched this in Mandarin at a crowded theatre in Hangzhou, and the audience reaction was quite positive. There was the occasional chuckle about Charlie Young's accent, but that aside everyone was pretty into it.

I should note that there were no English subtitles, so some of the finer elements of the plot/dialogue went right past me, but still, I could follow close enough to have a good time. Also, plot and dialogue have never been Tsui Hark's strong points, so I may have not been missing too much, and it allowed me to focus more on the visuals (which is where the movie has its greatest strengths...)

I'll start with the verdict: the movie is NOT a disappointment. I had been a little apprehensive after reading some of the mixed reviews that appeared when the film came out, but overall, I was quite pleasantly surprised. Tsui Hark doesn't reinvent the genre here, nor does he reach the heights of his glory days in the late 80s/early 90s, but Seven Swords still matches up quite well with recent Swordplay efforts from He Ping (WOHAE), Ang Lee (CTHD) and Zhang Yimou (Hero, HOFD). The film is closest in tone to He Ping's WOHAE, w/ similar earth-bound fight choreography, courtesy of Liu Chia Liang, and epic landscapes. The plot is straight-forward, but suffers a bit from having to spend time on too many characters. There are about a dozen major speaking parts, which makes it difficult to add layers of depth to each character, and takes away from the audience's ability to identify with any single character. On the plus side, the villains are great.

Villains aside, Charlie Young makes the most of her character, aided by the fact that her sword is the most interesting of the seven featured weapons, allowing her to add some much needed elements of humour to the story. And may I just say she looks absolutely stunning!

Leon Lai is pretty lifeless, and looks like an absolute dork with his weird haircut. Donnie Yen is probably the most interesting character (along with Liu Chia Liang and Charlie Young), and he gets to do quite a bit of acting along with his action scenes.

Let's talk about the action: there's little wire-fu, as can be expected with Liu Chia Liang as the choreographer. Tsui Hark manages a few in interesting set-ups, such as Liu Chia Liangs initial fight set against stark brown desert tones accented by a blood-red paper lantern, and especially the final showdown, that features both Leon Lai and Donnie Yen against the main villain (a mainland actor, whose name escapes me). Donnie shines as expected, and Tsui films an interesting sword-fighting sequence set in a narrow corridor. However, the action - while competent - never quite reaches the intensity of earlier efforts such as Tsui Hark's One-Armed Swordsman remake The Blade or the visual power and innovativeness of some of the fight sequences in Dragon Inn or the Swordsman series.

The romantic angle is slighly disappointing. Donnie's scenes suffer from the wooden acting of the Korean starlet he's paired with (although she does look very beautiful). The Chinese actress (gosh, I should look up the names) playing the village elder's daughter is much more convincing. Is it just me, or does she look very much like Zhang Ziyi? Anyway, she is one of the more interesting characters, but it looks like much of her role was left on the editing floor.

At over two hours, the film still feels a bit rushed, and I'm hoping the rumored 4-hour version will be released on DVD.

The cinematography is stunning, with great mountain vistas, although the shots of the 7 main characters riding off into the sunset smacked a bit too much of cliched images taken from the Western movie genre.

The music is a little disappointing, but not quite as annoying as some reviewers have made it out to be.

Overall, the film is quite entertaining, and I can't wait to watch it again on DVD.