Moon Warriors, The (1992)

A peasant swordsman (And Lau) aids an emperor on the run from an usurping brother and gains his friendship, but also falls in love with his bride-to-be (Anita Mui).

Review: The Moon Warriors brings together a fine cast headlined by Andy Lau, Anita Mui, and Maggie Cheung for a romantic swordplay film from director Sammo Hung. It’s a visually appealing production with impressive art direction, Ching Siu-tung’s elaborate wirework, and vibrant settings. In contrast, the story starts out compelling but falters in the second half.

For the uninitiated, this film is not based on Chinese history, but rather in the realm of the martial world. In terms of martial abilities, magic, and bizarre characters, this is a tame wuxia pien. Yet characters do tunnel underground while breathing through bamboo stalks and engage in high-flying sword duels. Sporting an awful hairdo, Andy Lau is Philip, carefree fisherman from Shrimp Village who isn’t your average peasant. He is an expert swordsman and also has a trained killer whale named “Sea Wayne” as a pet. Yes, the actor and/or stunt double perform Sea World-style tricks with a real killer whale. The animal has a small and ridiculous part to play in the film’s final struggle. Philip comes to the defense of strangers who turn out to be Emperor Yen Shih-san (Kenny Bee) and his retinue on the run from the dastardly 14th prince (Kelvin Wong Siu). The Emperor settles in a lost royal tomb to prepare efforts to regain the throne while he sends Philip to fetch his sweetheart Princess Moony (Anita Mui). Hounded by a masked assailant, the two inadvertently fall in love. Thanks to a spy, 14th Prince finds the Emperor and crashes his party.

The film is centered, not around the struggle of the Emperor to reclaim his throne, but on the doomed relationship between Philip and Moony, and Maggie Cheung’s equally doomed love for the Emperor. She plays the oddly-named Merlin, one of his closest retainers who incidentally does not perform any magic apart from simply being onscreen. These romantic angles are played too heavily and lead to some dull, dippy moments of dreamy fluff and emotional angst. Even though a fight between the Emperor and his 14th brother is assured, it seems merely a pretext to force all the lovers in this film to finally just up and state how they really feel rather than go on endlessly wringing their broken hearts. In this way, the film’s melancholy ending is a sigh of relief, but it’s still a disappointing and somewhat pointless conclusion that leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Visually, The Moon Warriors is one of the better swordplay films to come out of the 90s. A picturesque fishing village, bamboo forests, fields of flowers, and a cavernous tomb provide the settings and compare favorably with mainland Chinese productions. The action is slick with a ton of wirework and weapons combat involved. The great settings, particularly the tome really enhance the fights. I maintain that martial artists as stars are not required for films of this nature as the stories are not set in reality to begin with. So having the likes of Andy Lau and Anita Mui performing a lot of action is fine. It’s all nicely doubled, shot, and edited except for the occasional wire that can be seen, but his can be largely overlooked. There is a nifty token role given to former kung fu star Chang Yi who plays Anita’s father. Kelvin Wong’s use of a Chinese long weapon with a long handle and a thin, medium-sized blade on the end instead of a standard sword is a rare and welcome sight for anyone interested in the multitudinous variety of Chinese weapons.

As a wuxia film, The Moon Warriors is worth watching. Although the story is less satisfying and thought out as it could have been, the acting, action, and visuals make it worthwhile. It just helps to recognize that it’s made in the same mold of romantic strife as Journey of the Doomed (1985) and Ashes of Time (1994).