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Some of my friends are having a little problem. They don’t make much, money-wise. They’ve found an apartment they can sort of afford, but it comes with really third-degree asshole neighbors. One of the neighbors is causing them trouble, based on his belief that they can’t hurt him. They’re left feeling powerless, like they’re stuck in this rat-hole apartment, and they have no choice but to put up with this asshole. So, tonight, I’m watching a movie about a man who feels helpless, and then sorts things out with cold steel.

Release
Red Sun. Widescreen, dubbed. The audio sounds like it’s being played over a fifty foot string with Pringles cans on either end.

Starring
Wang Yu, Chiao Chiao, Pan Yin-tze, Huang Chung-shun

In Brief
The Chi sword school is filled with all sorts of moral uprightness. When a student of the school is mortally wounded defending the master, he asks that his soon-to-be-ORPHANED son be taken in as a student.

I cut myself shaving.

The boy receives this mixed blessing. On one hand, he gets a first-rate education in killing people with swords. On the other hand, he has to study alongside a bunch of chimps who are jealous of his skill, and the master’s esteem for him. Truth be told, the boy, Fang Kang, has a bit of a peculiar attitude, both humble and aloof in turns. Things come to a head when the master picks Fang to take over the school. Fang tries to leave in secret, but his fellow students, including the master’s daughter, want to have a duel with Fang before he leaves. Fang schools the lot of them without hurting anyone, but when the master’s daughter starts crying, Fang lets his guard down, and she cuts his arm off.

“You wanna get split?”

Fang wakes up in the care of a young woman, Xiao Man, at the edge of a village a few miles from the school. Guess what! She’s an ORPHAN! Fang is, understandably, a bit freaked by the missing arm.

The neigborhood bullies swing by to make trouble. Fang is unable to ward them off without his right arm.

“I can beat up your boyfriend, so ignore the fact that I’m a bipedal pig.”

Despite the scare, Xiao urges Fang to forget swordsmanship. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t. He finds a manual, and begins to study, learning to adapt to his circumstances.

Meanwhile, we find that the local bullies are part of a nation-wide bully alliance, working for the arch-rival of Fang’s former master. The arch-rival, in a fit of creativity, has devised the Sword Lock, a weapon which can counter all of the master’s sixty-four sword strikes. His creativity exhausted in the invention of the Sword Lock, the rival decides he’ll do exactly what every other villain in a Shaw Brothers movie does: try to wipe out the rival school.

Fang Kang catches wind of the rival’s plan. Despite the advice of his pacifist girlfriend, he can’t sit idle while his former master gets shut down by something as cheesy as a Sword Lock.

Nice Shots
Note the handling of the relationship between Fang Kang and Xiao Man.

Best Stunts
The action starts slow, but there are some very innovative fights wherein Wang Yu has to handle multiple attackers with one arm tucked in.

Disappointments
A mask? You’re a master swordsman with one arm. How many of those are running around the neighborhood?

Final Analysis
Despite the orphan cliche, the relationships play remarkably. Xiao Man is constantly tempering Fang Kang’s desire to sort matters out with violence, an element of conscience that usually disappears from a film as soon as the hero gets hold of a revenge motive.

A few people complain that there are shots where Wang Yu’s right arm can be picked out under his shirt. For me, this is not a problem. You have to be a pretty serious stickler for authenticity to ask that an actor have a limb amputated between shots.

All told, I’m going to give four stars for innovation and character interaction, minus a half star for being sappy.

If You Like This
You are not alone. One Armed Swordsman inspired enough sequels and remakes to constitute a sub-genre. See Return of the One Armed Swordsman, New One-Armed Swordsman, and Blade for examples of this.

For more action scenes with suspense, check out Come Drink With Me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 12:52 am and is filed under Chop Socky, Movies, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.