The ‘Sword of Swords,’ the ultimate weapon in the martial world is left to noble swordsman Lin Jen-shiau (Jimmy Wang Yu), who sacrifices nearly everything to save the country by keeping it out of the hands of the murderous Fang Shi-shiung (Tin Fung).

It was One-Armed Swordsman that established Jimmy Wang Yu as Shaw Brothers’ first million-dollar star and the world’s first martial arts superstar, but it was Sword of Swords that truly took Wang Yu and the entire wuxia genre to new heights of dramatic and bloody carnage as yet unsurpassed by even the most violent of Chang Cheh swordplay movies.

Rather than simply revel in the buckets of blood and detached limbs that had begun to pour forth from cinema screens at the time, writer-director Cheng Kang drags his luckless sword hero through the lowest depths of emotional and physical torment that Dante, were he a Hong Kong screenwriter in the ’60s, could ever have imagined. More to the point, Cheng does so with a subtle touch of sophistication that his peers Lo Wei and Chang Cheh rarely if ever possessed.

A legendary singing sword from the Sung Dynasty with the power to sweep its owner’s enemies off their feet has come into the possession of the righteous sword master Mui Ling-chuen (Cheng Miu). However, a band of scheming cutthroats desire this rare treasure and concoct a plan to have one of their own, Fang Shi-shiung (Tin Fung), gain Mui’s trust by dispatching with several attackers in order to become his first pupil and thus be eligible to inherit the sword. All well and good, except that Mui’s best and most loyal student is Fang’s fifth martial brother, Lin Jen-shiau (Jimmy Wang Yu). Despite Fang’s many efforts to discredit the humble young swordsman in the eyes of their master, when it comes time to pass the Sword of Swords on to an heir, Fang is not trusted and gives his intentions away before getting his hands on the real sword. Mui implores Lin to kill Fang to save them all further grief, but Lin is unable to kill his martial brother. That’s where the real trouble begins as Fang plots by any means to get the sword. As a matter of national security, Lin struggles to keep the sword safe despite having his wife kidnapped, his parents murdered, his eyes blinded, and his friends turned against him. While in hiding with his infant son, Lin trains his hearing for combat to make up for his blindness before he is discovered by Fang and his men.

I previously mentioned the words subtle and sophistication in reference to this movie, but I ought to clarify that description. Sword of Swords is anything but subtle in how its protagonist is abused. Just when you think it cannot get any worse, it does. The key story element here is that Lin is purposely restraining himself and as a result must endure endless torment. It is both the movie’s greatest strength and greatest source of frustration to never see him unleash the full fury of what Cheng Kang has clearly established as the martial world’s most powerful weapon. Once blinded, Lin opts to use twin daggers with an underhanded grip, similar to Shintaro Katsu’s cane sword style in his Zatoichi films. Of course, this movie is Hong Kong’s homage or pilfering of the Zatoichi films. It’s also clearly another take on the disability theme that Wang Yu played in One-Armed Swordsman. Yet within the context of genre movies, this excessive suffering isn’t really so outrageous as one recalls Toshiro Mifune’s beating in Yojimbo or Clint Eastwood’s forced walk through the desert in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The disability simply becomes another hurdle the hero must overcome in his quest. This theme within the kung fu movie genre perhaps reached its furthest extent in Chang Cheh’s Venoms classic, Crippled Avengers (1978).

The subtlety in Sword of Swords comes with how Cheng Kang chooses to focus on character interactions and intriguing close ups such as when Fang, posing as a hero in hopes of tricking Lin’s father into handing over the sword, spots Lin’s sister warning her father to take caution. As a result of his reluctance to put his sword in jeopardy, Wang Yu’s character has complex relations with his abused wife, ably played by the lovely Li Ching and with his angered father, played very well by one of my favorite SB character actors, Yeung Chi-hing. Wang Yu displays a lot of inner conflict that nicely stays near the boiling point until he finally unleashes his full, murderous anger towards his enemies at the end. And by that point, he’s endured so much with noble restraint from such incorrigible “scums” that anything he does to them seems more than justified.

The true mark of a martial masterpiece still remains with the action choreography and Sword of Swords delivers with excellent swordplay from the world’s first recognized action directors, Lau Kar-leung and Tong Gaai. They make use of some Japanese chambara poses, along with very purposeful and direct Chinese swordplay. Everything gears up to Wang Yu’s stunning confrontation with a small army of swordsmen in the finale. It’s a screen fight as great as any imaginable as a blind Wang Yu deftly cuts his way through swordsmen with his twin daggers. Great use of tight space is used and Cheng adds a last-minute shocker midway through to infuse Wang Yu’s determination with a maddening frenzy. What follows is an uninterrupted dash through dozens of attackers as Wang Yu tears them to blood-spurting pieces like a walking paper shredder. It’s simply brilliant.

Cheng Kang, father of modern action master Tony Ching Siu-tung (House of Flying Daggers), proves himself to be one of the great masters of martial arts cinema with Sword of Swords. It’s a wuxia film as riveting as it is emotionally intense. Through great performances from Wang Yu and company, fierce action, masterful direction, and a welcome mix of location shoots and colorful sets, the film comes alive on a rich tapestry of blood-soaked destruction and an overpowering determination to endure for the greater good.

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