The Bravest Revenge (1971)

Polly Shang-kwan and Tien Peng head a cast of screen heroes battling their way through an army of swordsmen to reach a powerful villain (Yi Yuen) in this routine wuxia actioner from Taiwan’s Union Film Co. Director Chien Lung provides nearly non-stop fantasy swordplay that grows tedious as a result of dated, underdeveloped plot and character development and too much gimmicky and repetitious action.

After an elder knight is murdered by escaped villain Chau Mu-tien (Yi Yuen), the dead hero’s twin dagger-wielding daughter (Polly Shang-kwan) reunites with her three brothers after five years of martial training to seek revenge. Outmatched by Chau, the foursome receive the aid of a chivalrous knight named “The Sword King” (Tien Peng) who quests for the legendary Sun Sword, hoping that the powerful weapon will provide the edge the heroes need in order to defeat their foe.

As The Sword King faces a test of character from the reclusive, white-haired keeper of the Sun Sword, the remaining heroes begin to wage an all-out assault on the villain’s mountainous lair, passing through the treacherous traps of the Poison and Fire Gates and facing hundred’s of bloodthirsty minions determined to cut them down.

Up until THE BRAVEST REVENGE, I was beginning to think that Union Film could do no wrong. Past wuxia films from the company, especially those featuring Shang-kwan, competed very well with their Hong Kong counterparts at leading studio Shaw Brothers. Yet despite a similarly big-scale look and the presence of talented leads, this production is reminiscent of the ultra-low budget indie kung fu and swordplay movies of the late 1970s, defined by threadbare plots and lots of mindlessly generic martial arts action too often relying on cheap editing and wire tricks and not enough on physical skill or creative choreography.

I’m usually game for action-heavy wuxia films with high body counts, the likes of which Chang Cheh excelled at. Yet Chien Lung has little control over the fighting frenzy and opts to let nearly every sequence drag on for at least several minutes longer than they should. Although the film is only 90 minutes, it feels more like two or three hours of monotonous and pointless sword clanking, killing and bouncy acrobatics, all of which are either sped up unnaturally or slowed down for failed dramatic effect.

THE BRAVEST REVENGE is a good film to watch simply to see what happens when wirework, reverse-speed filming and trampolines are horrendously abused. These tricks are common in wuxia films of this era but are generally used sparingly and for good reason.

Trampolines provide basically one maneuver, allowing a stuntman to bounce through a fight sequence, occasionally with a flip. For obvious reasons the floor is never shown and the stunt double, with his back to the camera to hide his face, almost always travels in a straight line that is conveniently clear of any obstruction. Chien has stunt actors bouncing all over the place in this movie.

Reversing the camera speed gives the not-so-convincing illusion of fighters jumping up onto ledges or tree branches, often with their backs facing the direction they’re supposed to be headed. Thankfully, this is a trick that has largely gone extinct as it never looks good, certainly not here.

The art of wirework has advanced significantly in the last 30 years but in 1971 it was still only capable of producing very basic aerial movements in a confined spot. To repeatedly drive this point home, the film has fighters being hoisted straight up and down again and again like human yo-yos. At one point a female fighter is seen spinning horizontally over the heads of her co-stars like a pinwheel as she dangles from her wire. A similarly goofy move was performed two years earlier by Wang Yu in RETURN OF THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN. It makes no sense for a fighter to be doing this ineffectual move but it was something that some of the wire crews of the day were capable of so it they threw it in.

As the leading martial arts talent, Polly Shang-kwan is unfortunately caught up in this mess of a movie with only shared screen time opposite Tien Peng, Yi Yuen and their more forgettable co-stars. She looks stunning though and manages to shine with dagger-wielding skills that would be put on display again years later in Joseph Kuo’s THE SHAOLIN KIDS. Some of her emerging charisma also slips through what would otherwise be a dull female lead performance hindered by a poorly written script and uninspired direction.

There are strong signs of lax film editing, notably in at least one instance of a recycled panning shot and an embarrassing film gaffe where two random walkers in modern dress appear in the background during a shot. Even without these errors, the lack of tighter cutting on the action sequences show either a measure of ineptitude or a desire to contractually fill screen time with minimal effort.

There is a sense that THE BRAVEST REVENGE is out of control or at least being guided by someone out of their depth or distracted. It’s as if Chien Lung, who seems to have his head stuck in the stagy genre acting and fighting of the 1960s, told his action director to fill in for him for most of the production. This happened all the time in independent kung fu movies throughout the 1970s but at least many of them had skilled screen fighters like Leung Kar-yan and Dorian Tan performing quality shapes action to please fu fans. All we get here is a restrained Polly Shang-kwan occasionally propping up a weak wuxia film dominated by a grind fest of laborious and unremarkable screen fighting that saps away what should have been great fun in watching a few sword fighters take on an army. It’s a flick like this that gives Chinese-language martial arts films a bad name because it completely discards quality for mindless, sterile filler. Hollywood now does the same thing with CGI-heavy action films like DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION and TRANSFORMERS.

Related Topics: Polly Shang-kwan, swordplay, The Bravest Revenge (1971), Tien Peng, Wuxia