In the early 1600's, a new dynasty called the Ching Dynasty has been established, and the new government form a new law to ban the practise of martial arts. The bloodthirsty General Fire-Wind, a surrendered military official, forms his own army and starts killing people who violates the law, not only that but the man tries to kill almost everyone he comes across since he is rewarded for each kill. Fu Qingzhu, a retired executioner, see it as his duty to put a stop to the general's reign of terror. Together with two men, Fu sets course towards Mount Heaven to seek help from Master Huiming. Once there, they are each given a powerful sword, and Master Huiming's four disciples joins them as well, and together they become the seven swords who will fight the evil general.
Tsui Hark is a director who has made some crappy stuff, but he has also made a whole bunch of cool flicks as well, and I guess Seven Swords happens to come somewhere inbetween. The man made some great HK flicks during the 1980's and early 1990's, but after that, things took a different turn. Seven Swords feels like a "big" movie, but unfortunately it doesn't deliver all the way, and is not such a "big" experience in the end. It looks great, the acting is ok, it's full of battles, fighting scenes and offers a hell of a lot of action, but it's just there for the moment and doesn't really leave a mark after it's gone.
If I would've seen this movie in the early 90's or something like that, I would've probably drooled on myself from being too excited. Watching it now, it was more of a difficult task to stay fully focused the movie throughout as you've seen everything before, hundreds of times. So we're not dealing with anything new here really, and Seven Swords is actually a pretty straight-forward movie with a simple story, and no real twists and turns.
On the positive side, it was truly easy to get into the movie right from the very start. It doesn't start telling the story slowly, but instead jumps right into the action, and the first half-hour or so is filled with great fighting scenes and some really cool killing scenes. We get to see this evil general and his army storm the villages and killing people everywhere, so yeah, he's supposed to be the bad guy. I don't wanna write too much about the actual story, but basically a group of 7 people get their hands on some powerful swords, one sword per person, and sets out to put a stop to the general and his army.
 
Now, you as the viewer are supposed to root for these people, the seven swords, but I felt like that was extremely hard and so I ended up rooting for the evil general since he was a much cooler character. I'm glad I didn't bet any money on him though. My main problem here was that early on in the movie you get to see the general and his army killing off loads of people and it seems like they can't be defeated. Later on, when these seven swords show up, the general's army look like a bunch of pussies that couldn't kill their enemies even if their lifes depended on it. And it just sucks. These seven swords are invincible and that's no fun. At one in the movie, one of the seven happens to be captured, but since they're all so darn great, you know nothing's gonna happen to him, and that his friends will save him.
Let's take a superhero flick for example. What about Batman Begins.. You know that Batman's not gonna die because that would be the end of the movie, but the guy still gets hurt, beaten, and has to suffer through a lot of stuff in order to stop the villains. That's totally ok, because even if you know that our hero's not gonna be wasted, he still has to go through some stuff, stuff that brings some suspense for you as the viewer. But Seven Swords has absolutely no suspense to offer, and these 7 people are just having a too easy time doing their job. So even if it looks great and all that, it's quite hollow and too predictable.
I can't say it's a bad movie, but on the other hand, I didn't get too much out from watching it. If our seven heroes would have been wounded, some of them would've died or that they just had to go through some hard stuff, it would've been a hell of a lot better. Now, it just felt too easy, too straight-forward, and too predictable. Some of the fighting scenes are great to watch, but the movie as a whole is not that great.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Chat gim, Seven Swords of Mt. Tien - Part I, Seven Swordsmen Leave Mt. Heaven, Qi jian
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Tsui Hark
WRITING CREDITS: Chi-Sing Cheung, Tin Nam Chun
GENRE: Swordplay, Action, Drama
CAST: Leon Lai, Charlie Yeung, Donnie Yen
COUNTRY: South Korea, Hong Kong, China
RUNTIME: 153 min
RATING: 5/10
Seven Swords Website/IMDB Click here
Seven Swords Trailer Click here
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