Among the boldest accomplishments of Hong Kong cinema’s golden age, this uniquely visceral martial-arts movie puts a gritty new spin on the story of the one-armed swordsman, an iconic figure from the moment he was introduced by the Shaw Brothers studio in 1967.
Composed in a whirlwind of immersive close-ups and fractured editing, THE BLADE follows the young sword-maker Ding On (Vincent Zhao), who, after losing an arm in an ambush, transforms himself into a furious avenger. With its intentionally disorienting stylization and starkly brutal tone, THE BLADE was a rare commercial disappointment for Tsui Hark, but it has since been reclaimed as one of the director’s most radical visions—a tour de force of action expressionism, and a scathing reappraisal of the wuxia genre’s code of masculinity, that achieves a feverish intensity.
In Cantonese with English subtitles.
Special live intro from local Hong Kong genre film connoisseur and one of the programmers of the Seattle Film Society, Patrick McFarland.
“The action scenes are some of the most chaotic in Tsui’s canon, with an emphasis on rapid, almost cubist editing that seduces you with swings and strikes caught from multiple angles.” Jake Cole, Slant
“Watching [The Blade] is like sitting in the passenger seat of a feature-length, high-speed car chase sequence. It’s thrilling, it’s confusing, and you’ve never seen anything like it before. And you want to go again and again, like a rollercoaster ride through hell.” Peter Martin, ScreenAnarchy