Losing your greatest rival is like losing your soul mate,” laments a minor character in Sword Master. Although fighting and loving are indeed intertwined in this CGI-heavy update of the Chinese sword-fight genre, director Derek Yee’s exploration of that theme is cursory. The emphasis is on deep-focus 3-D spectacle, not psychology.
The central romance, if that’s the right term, is between two swordsmen: roguish Yan (Peter Ho) and noble Xiaofeng (Kenny Lin). Yan, who has a skull tattooed on his face, has long wanted to duel Xiaofeng, and is enraged when informed that he’s dead. (In fact, Xiaofeng has forsaken violence and hit the road, accepting a series of abject jobs – and the nickname “Useless.”)
Working in a brothel, Xiaofeng falls for a hooker (Mengjie Jiang) with a heart almost as golden as the loot she snags from unsuspecting clients. Meanwhile, Xiaofeng’s spurned fiancee (Yiyan Jiang) searches for him. In addition to a broken heart, she has a ready sword and a small army. There are several other factions as well, all ready for the large-scale warfare that precedes the inevitable one-on-one showdown.
A different version of this story was told in 1977’s Death Duel, in which Xiaofeng was played by none other than Derek Yee. The director, known for such gritty Hong Kong escapades as One Nite in Mongkok, here takes a glossy, fantastical approach. Despite bloody mayhem, Sword Master is more swashbuckling ballet than epic battle.
(Two and one-half stars. Unrated. Contains violence, potty humor and brothel scenes. In Mandarin with subtitles. 105 minutes.)