Seven Swords

how many years has tsui hark been plodding along? and still he turns in this solid effort while the film industry in HK are still going down hill at the box offices.

yet he goes out to the XinJiang wilderness and do this 7 swords - an ensemble cast from an Chinese paper pop wuxia column written in the 50s. for what you have to wonder? fame... fortune ..love of the movies? could be .. or maybe more.

this film is meticulous, well told, well styled, with an interesting choice in action director to boot: the old timer, Lau Kar-Leung, who is not a specialist in sword play. why again? meticulous in the constant mix of medium and close-ups -- his style, and washes these with occasional wides. here he adds the constant flash-backs. meticulous in color control, lighting, the heat of the battle, the heart of the story.

His movies are kind of a Chinese comic book; or the Chinese science fiction. it is arguably for the Chinese spirit, documents upon documents of the Chinese mind set, the hopes and dreams in the culture (because of suppressions?), ideals and philosophies and sustainment of what maybe to him -- that are Chinese? and yet universal at the same time? i'm reaching sure. but i'm Chinese after all.

The movie started out strong although it was far from "The Seven Samurai", which I believe it intends to emulate. In the first half, I found myself caring about the characters and the non-stop action was exciting. Nevertheless, in the second half, the script started meandering in a number of nonsensical directions and the ending was somewhat ridiculous. Nonsensical is a relative term given that the film was fable like and thus once it stopped making sense it really stopped making sense.

Overall, I recommend the movie since it exceeded my expectations. It's popcorn with good character development tacked on at the beginning and So-yeon Kim is eye candy throughout the film. However, anticipate to find yourself somewhat disappointed towards the end.

Just finished watching Seven Swords. I have no idea why people are so against it. Sure, at 2 and a half hours length, it is still missing over an hour, but I had no trouble understanding the story, and to me the characters were pretty fleshed out. For some reason people are dead set against this film, and I wonder if it has to do with Crouching Tiger, Hero and Daggers?

Maybe these people haven't seen The Bride With White Hair, The Blade or films like that. I get the impression that many complaints are leveled by Hollywood trained fans who don't yet understand the context of this film. Whatever the case, this film deserves accolades for it's imagination and for hewing so close to sword fight movie tradition.

The action was fantastic and the fights were creative and very clever. Yes, they did it with wires. That's why we keep coming back. The swords themselves rules, and the cinematography had that Tsui Hark attention to detail. The middle of the film has mostly dramatic elements, building up to a huge finale. I never thought it dragged on, and I found myself rapt until the final credit rolled.

Seven Swords was beautifully shot, the characters embodied the fantasy perfectly and acting was full of heart. Get it.

Being a big fan of Tsui Hark films, I had been looking forward to this film for a long time, and even though Leon Lai is in the movie, I still thought it would be watchable.

The film was shot quite beautifully, with certain scenes showing some fantastic imagery. However, do not take this to mean that the film was full of beautiful landscapes, no. The way the film was shot was matched fully well with the barren lands that the majority of the scenes take place in.

The music was captivating and suited the moment when you actually noticed it was playing. In my opinion, the typical 'Hero' theme in this film was a perfect mix of cheesiness and just plain, pure brilliance.

The fight scenes were fast and furious, but sometimes, due to the camera work, it was difficult to see what had become of the amazing choreography.

At this particular moment in time, I can only really think of two bad things about the film, the first being pacing and the second being the timeline/editing. The film tends to jump from scene to scene fairly well, but there were certain moments where it is obvious that something was missing, be it dialogue or scenes, and this made the pacing factor unbearable as it seemed forever for the film to get anywhere.

Overall though, I guess if you like wuxia movies, then this might appeal to you, but I still feel quite doubtful that this would actually appeal to a larger audience.

The swords are awesome by the way.... ;) Let's hope that they release a better DVD version though...

With this film, the Asians seem to have reclaimed the "Seven Samurai" plot line but here the seven are somewhat haphazardly chosen (since the skill lies not with the person itself but the particular sword he or she brandishes, hence the title). However, by concentrating on the romantic complications in which a few of the main characters become embroiled, some of the warriors are kept too much in the background…but the leader of the seven is as unassuming as Takashi Shimura had been in SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), while the chief villain is flamboyantly played in the manner of Eli Wallach from THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)! There is no denying the fact that its mainstay are the epic scope of the production itself (highlighting the meticulous period detail) and the elaborate action sequences which, thankfully, are rarely implausible - as most actioners from Asia (even the more critically lauded ones) tended to be of late! Apparently, the film (which runs for more than 2½ hours) was trimmed down from an even longer version; though the IMDb doesn't mention this, a Maltese friend of mine who's a veritable Asian-film nut assured me of it…and, in fact, the narrative did feel kind of choppy to me!