This is what the martial arts films were meant to be like, before the hacks made them into clowns jumping all over the place, kicking and striking a thousand times, with 90 back flips in each fight.
Here, we have a crisp story, and interesting characters. The film follows mostly "Third Master" and his attempt to become a normal man, trying to elude his fame.
It reminds a viewer of the "gunfighter" in the old West, trying to hang up his guns, but with young upstarts out to make a name for themselves, trying to goad him into a fight.
The interesting thing here is the array of other characters. Some are simple folk, some helpful, some afraid, some benevolent. Others are fighters. We find that many others also hung up their swords. At least two characters, we find, were successful in "retiring" before they reached a stage that Third Master did.
The first master also drops into obscurity for a while. The reasons are made clear later. A lot of chance meetings happen for the sake of a great fairy tale, but it's okay, because it's part of the magic.
The body count is higher than it should be. A lot of the deaths are "cliche" movie deaths, and brings this film down from the classic status it could have attained. Still, the imagery is good, and there is refreshing dialog, a lot of insight. Parituclarly good is the scene where the third master thinks he is dying, and asks others what they would do if they knew they would die tomorrow.
Later martial arts movies failed because they couldn't balance action with dialog. This film has a great balance, because too much action becomes as dull as too little. This comes from a guy who is very attention deficit, so when movies are too relentless in meaningless action for me, there is a real problem.
Here, we have a nice balance, although even this film could have toned down the action some. Put it this way. It makes the normal action Western, say "The Magnificent Seven" look slow paced in comparison.
Good film. Worth watching, but has some sadness to it.
