Seven Swords (2005)
Reviewed by: PAUL MARTINEZ on 2006-01-22
Summary: Editing Killed the HK Film Star
When you take a 4 hour film and slice it down to 2 1/2 hours. It's going to seem like character development was not done well, the story didn't flow correctly, the plot gets sketchy, etc. All these things are how I felt while watching Seven Swords. I reserve myself from bashing Tsui Hark, who desperately needed a good body of work to offset his recent debacles(The Legend Of Poo...LOL, thats funny). Because this is not the film he made.
Visually, I very much liked this film. Sometimes the overly beautiful scenery and costumes seems phony to me. Mr. Hark showed some gritty realism here. I for one appreciated that.
Action scenes were done well in the directors usual fashion. I found myself remembering some fight scenes from The Blade while watching this. Donnie Yen is as awesome as ever although I hope were not going to see him constantly doing these stoic hero roles all the time that used to be Jet Li's usual forum.
The acting was okay, nothing spectacular. I particulary enjoyed watching scenes with Kim Soo-Yeon(Green Pearl). And of course Sun Hong Lei as Fire-Wind.
I would have like to see this film split into 2, like Tarantino did with Kill Bill. Then I think we would see if Tsui Hark has anything left in his tank. [I watched this film again and for some reason i enjoyed it more possibly because i wasn't looking to review it, just SEE it. I still think it fails in characterzation but other than that I found it entertaining for the most part so I raised my score.]
Reviewer Score: 7