High adventure, swordplay and intrigue waits within this excellent wuxia pian adapted from a novel by Gu Long. It stars Tien Peng as a swordsman forced to seek out a powerful sword technique after his wife is kidnapped and best friend turned against him by a ruthless clan and their needle-throwing masked boss.
It took two viewings to be sure, but I’ve come away from fully absorbing THE LOST SWORDSHIP with an immense sense of satisfaction at having seen quite possibly the best wuxia pian to come out of Taiwan since King Hu’s THE FATE OF LEE KHAN (1973). The tone is less moody and the visuals less arresting than a King Hu title, but nearly everything is still picture perfect by pre-New Wave standards.
Today’s audiences may have a hard time of judging this movie fairly and that would be a real shame. Fancy wirework and meticulously constructed visuals seem to have trumped engaging plotting and character development in recent years. THE LOST SWORDSHIP is just the opposite. Action scenes, while very well constructed by action directors Hsieh Hsing and Ko Hsiao-pao, are present to serve the script while the heroes and villains portrayed within are far more believable in their struggles than more recent character contrivances seen on screen.
The story, with above average direction by Li Chia, is fantastic and this no doubt has a lot to do with the fact that the script is written by prolific scribe Ni Kuang and adapted from Gu Long’s wuxia novel THE FRAGRANT SWORD RAIN. You know you have a good product when even a mediocre translation to English (subtitles and dubbing) cannot diminish the enjoyment factor, at least not by much.
Bishop, the golden-masked leader of the Tien Cheng Chiao clan is determined to rule the martial world by uncovering the secrets of the Fragrant Sword technique. This mysterious figure with his flying golden needles has already recruited or wiped out most of the leading swordsmen except Lu Nan-jen (Tien Peng), the one who holds the key to the Fragrant Sword.
In an attempt to persuade Nan-jen to share his secrets, Bishop orders his men to kidnap his wife Jo-pi (Tong Bo-wan) after is has been implied that she has been sexually assaulted. Later while trying to come to her rescue, Nan-jen is wounded internally by a palm strike from one of Bishop’s men and is forced to retreat by taking a dive over a waterfall.
Meanwhile, Nan-jen’s best friend and fellow swordsman Ling Pei-hsiu (Pai Ying) is captured by the clansmen. They use his desire for Nan-jen’s wife to convince him to join their cause with the promise that Jo-pi will be his once her husband is found.
Now weakened and unable to rescue his wife, Nan-jen decides to learn the Fragrant Sword skill based on the only clue he has, a secret location of its whereabouts passed on solely through his family. He enters a cave and meditates for two years before passing through to a hidden passageway to receive his birthright. What he discovers is not what he had expected. However, it still proves a benefit and after a total of five years in preparation, he emerges to take on Bishop and rescue his wife.
Everything so far neatly fits into the first half of the movie. The latter half shifts to a lighter tone as a stronger Nan-jen is joined by the Fiery Beauty (Wong Ping), after a chance encounter in a tea house. She’s a feisty swordswoman with duel-wielding short swords who falls in love with Nan-jen at first sight. In a slightly comical fashion, she struggles to keep him out of trouble and his thoughts off of other women.
In a predictable yet highly entertaining series of events, Nan-jen and his female accomplice take on Bishop’s minions. This include the seductress Wan-miao (Hu Chin), her female lieutenant, a Wudang swordsman (Man Chung-san), a mace-wielding warrior (Shut Chung-tin), and a small army of sword and net-bearing footmen. Nan-jen’s real challenge comes in facing his former friend Pei-hsiu and Bishop himself. His only chance of beating the clan leader is in discovering Bishop’s true identity and using it against him.
The swordplay action is uniformly excellent in presentation and execution. There is also a tremendous variety of action to take in. Golden needles penetrate skulls. Combatants use the cover of a field of tall grass to unleash surprise attacks. A forest hides dozens of deadly traps, from scores of arrows to wooden spikes flying through the air. A sword blade flies off its hilt to strike multiple targets and return to its owner like a boomerang. Attackers perform synchronized summersaults while stretching out nets between them in an attempt to ensnare their opponents. There is open-hand and traditional sword dueling, limited flying and lots of aerial acrobatics.
All the actors perform very well physically, while acrobatic stunt doubles are smoothly edited in for some of the more difficult movements. What is especially nice to see is that the action feels story-driven. It’s never overlong or used as filler, as is the case with many low budget martial arts movies lacking in a decent script. At the same time, it’s not glossed over. Li Chia and his choreographers strike the perfect balance.
The art direction has its pluses and minuses. Some of the costumes look snazzy, such as the ones worn by heroes Tien Peng and Wong Ping. But then some of the villains look pretty goofy. Pai Ying’s blue and yellow garb looks cheap, while some of the women including Hu Chin show a surprising amount of leg with their tacky, shredded skirts.
Production standards are very good considering that this is a genre film from Taiwan where budgets were usually small. Indoor sets rival those of Shaw Brothers in ornamentation and jiang hu flavor, while less convincing outdoor sets (dig those cement brick walls) are balanced out with some memorable natural settings that you’d never see in an SB wuxia pian.
It’s ultimately Li Chia’s impressive direction and the highly professional camera work and editing that brings everything together. There are many examples of where the filmmakers go to extra lengths to improve the look of the movie in ways not usually seen in Taiwanese or even Hong Kong movies of the day. I could run down the list with examples, such as where the camera shifts focus between actors in the same frame, but it’s simply best seen.
THE LOST SWORDSHIP could do with some minor improvements, like an original score instead of familiar stock music. No fault is damning though. It has too much going for it to bother with little gripes. Normally, I’d recommend a martial arts movie chiefly based on the quality of its action. In this case it’s not just the action that shines, but a wonderful adventure story too with memorable, well imagined characters pulled from the work of one of the world’s greatest wuxia novelists.
by Mark Pollard
