Just a few individuals bought the memo. The martial-arts legend’s new directorial effort, Blades of the Guardians, opened within the U.S. on Feb. 17 to simply $761,881 on the field workplace — a meager complete in comparison with extra aggressively marketed releases, however a real win for its distributor, Nicely Go USA, one of many prime purveyors of Jap import cinema in North America. The opening was sufficiently big to encourage one other weekend in theaters, which implies the Quentin Tarantino buffs, Christopher Nolan devotees, and Peter Jackson acolytes who swear they love epic blockbusters haven’t missed out but.
Blades of the Guardians, based mostly on the Chinese language manhua of the identical identify, follows Dao Ma (Wu Jing), a biao ren — a combo of an expert bodyguard and bounty hunter — who, by defending himself in opposition to a corrupt governor (Jet Li), turns into the “second most wished fugitive within the land.” At first, he survives by zigging and zagging via a grey zone between a warrior’s code of honor and the official brutality of imperial energy. However when Dao Ma’s benefactor Lao Mo (Tony Leung Ka-fai) duties him with escorting the revolutionary Zhishilang, deemed the precise “most wished legal within the empire,” everyone seems to be out of the blue on his tail.
Naturally, a pleasant journey via the sunny sands of the Gobi Desert devolves right into a relentless gauntlet of ambushes and betrayals. Dao Ma’s nephew Xiao Qi, the fierce warrior Ayuya, rival bounty hunters, and political operatives all collide in a nonstop pursuit. It’s dense with names and places, however primary in its storytelling: Dao Ma actually simply must get all of his new associates out alive! As a director with a knack for precision, Yuen trusts the viewers to know relationships via motion, glances, and blade work slightly than exposition dumps.
Yuen’s significance to fashionable motion cinema is tough to overstate. From his early Hong Kong collaborations with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, to redefining Hollywood combat grammar after the Wachowskis gave him a hoop, the Chinese language filmmaker has formed how violence is staged, framed, and felt for half a century. He’s been a much less constant director than choreographer, however Blades of the Guardians looks like a end result of profession. Yuen swings for the fences with full consciousness that this can be his most private assertion but, and on the age of 80, presumably his final hurrah.
In talking on the movie, Yuen has emphasised how he sees Blades of the Guardians as a return to the bodily foundations of wuxia cinema. Our bodies matter. Weight issues. Penalties matter. The digital camera doesn’t cover motion via frantic chopping or digital trickery; it respects the coaching, and appears to dare performers to push previous what appears humanly attainable. Beholding the fights, you’re feeling all of it.
In an effort to go as onerous as attainable, the movie performs like a wuxia Mad Max: Fury Highway: a sustained chase throughout hostile terrain punctuated by eruptions of fight. Crosscutting between time and placement permits Yuen to stage battles in snow-choked courtyards and blazing infernos, drawing extra energy from elemental chaos. A set piece inside a mud storm — possibly essentially the most overt evocation of Fury Highway — makes use of the wind to justify the wuxia acrobatics as fighters glide via gusts to ship their blows.
The casting is equally maximalist. Legends like Jet Li, Tony Leung Ka-fai, and Kara Hui share the display screen with modern stars corresponding to Nicholas Tse and Max Zhang. Rising performers like Yu Shi, whose horsemanship is as spectacular as his martial ability, steal the highlight. This can be a forged constructed for bodily cinema.
However it’s Wu Jing as Dao Ma who carries the movie with a concentrated-but-charismatic efficiency that feels extra Steve McQueen-y than any warrior within the wuxia canon. He’s half Han Solo, half Ogami “Lone Wolf” Ittō, and half John McClane; an antihero with morality solid in movement. Wu is formidable in fight — there may be seemingly no prop he can’t use to win a combat — however simply as compelling in stillness, anchoring the movie’s extra with real emotional heft.
For all of the methods Hollywood has borrowed from Hong Kong motion cinema — from Yuen’s personal work stateside to the rise of 87North’s John Wick manufacturing facility — you will note nothing like Blades of the Guardians in theaters this 12 months except you truly see Blades of the Guardians in theaters this 12 months. It’s a grasp’s towering reminder of what spectacle appears like when it’s constructed from self-discipline and human presence.
Swords conflict with sickening readability. Limbs are severed. Wirework defies gravity with a grace that American motion cinema nonetheless can’t replicate. Gun-fu might hit onerous, however the visceral thrill of a wonderfully executed aerial spin kick stays unmatched. Hollywood can’t do wuxia proper — sorry, Warriors of Virtue. Blessedly, even at 80, Yuen Woo-ping completely can.
Blades of the Guardians is presently in theaters.
