The Blade

Epic re-imagining of The One Armed Swordsman that was very near the pinnacle of the early 90s wuxia resurgence. The action is a fast and bloody maelstrom of whirling blades that can make your head spin as much as the dark story, but it's completely enthralling.

Excellent staging of the fights. Wide variety of camera and choreography techniques keep the violence entertaining. Brutal movie, but the protagonist's redemption was satisfying. Quite a bit was lost in translation though, the version I watched had borderline incomprehensible subtitles.

A broken man with a broken blade who sure can spin like a motherfucker. Ding On is a great, badass character, but everyone else is too shallow in comparison. The action is pretty good throughout, but the final sword fight is on a whole different level of coolness. The last fight ends the movie on such a high. I love how wild and frenetic the camerawork is; imagine if Gareth Evans took a hit of crack before shooting The Raid movies and you might have a pretty good idea of the film's visual style.

A chaotic tale of emotionally random idiots. Seems like this movie was once 3 hours long and they just cut half of it randomly. But I like it.

I will give some points just because of the Wushu remembering.

Not as good as I'd hoped, mainly due to sub-par camerawork and editing. A few shots are cool, but most times the visuals actually detract from the flow of the fights/movie. The final battle and unusual fighting style of the main character compensate for some of the weaker parts.