Writer-director Lu Chun-Ku's Bastard Swordsman refuses to sit still. Structured around the tangled webs woven by competing martial arts schools, the film is constant movement and counter-movement. This rush of gesticulation isn't just the weightless figures blasting around the frame either. Onscreen energies have sunken into the piece itself, resulting in an assembly that reads like a tape stuck on fast-forward. Lu and cinematographer Chin Chiang Ma (who previously collaborated on the similarly mind-boggling Holy Flame of the Martial World) approach even basic head-to-head conversations as an opportunity to hurl the camera into their actor's faces or stalk around them in an aggressive, agitated manner. Editors So Chan-Kwok, Lau Shiu-Gwong and Chiang Hsing-Lung are the willing accomplices, paring down their director's raw footage until Bastard Swordsman is nothing but breathless motion.
Perhaps this method of delivery is reflective of an overstuffed screenplay? One that aims to condense a 60 episode television series (the show in question, Reincarnated, was broadcast on Hong Kong TV in 1979) into one, ninety minute movie? Lu crams in factions and sub-factions; secret identities and betrayals; as well as heart-breaking familial disorder, into a story that is, broadly, a kind of wuxia Cinderella. Norman Chui, who passed away recently, plays Yun Fei Yang, an orphan who overcomes his diminished station in life to fight on behalf of the kung-fu academy that used him as a live target during throwing dart lessons. Transformed from a virginal whipping boy into a supernatural demi-God, thanks to the combined efforts of several (deferred) love interests, Yun vanquishes the pretenders that have besmirched the good name of Wudang. Having won the day, it's a shame that Yun doesn't go even further, tearing down the pillars of the sect that so relentlessly mistreated him. Unfortunately, for this blood-thirsty audience, by that point in the story Yun towers over such earthly concerns.
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