Seven Swords – Review

While the violence is well done and the General’s top soldiers are truly wicked and have great battle sequences, everything else is just way too standard. Yes, the great Donnie Yen is still in this film but it’s difficult to go into a lot of character development when you have 7 characters to fit into a two hour movie. Basically, seven unique swordsmen band together to save a village and its people from the evil General Fire-Wind. That’s about all you need to know about the plot. There’s also a subplot of love triangle between the main character and the Korean female love interest.

The Manchurians have taken over China and built the Qing Dynasty. The new government is banning the practice of Martial Arts fearing that the villages that practice it could rebel. This ban is far worst than you can imagine, the services of the Fire-Wind army are acquired to help make this law certain. The only thing the army cares about is money and they make a profit off eliminating entire villages that practice martial arts to make sure a martial artists never walks the earth again. The acting was really good, the camera angles were great, and though the picture was cool, it could’ve been better lit.

Donnie Yen fans rest assured, this is a very easy movie to obtain unlike a few of his other films. The fight choreography is nothing special, and the dialogue seems to lurch from one non sequitur to another. So, if you want to see a Donnie Yen showcase, you might want to look elsewhere. I won’t lie though, even though a lot of the fight scenes seem to fall short until the end of the film, the ending battle is truely awesome. You get to see all the swords in action and each person use there own skill and techniques that make them unique.

I guess looking back, my only complaint is it gives no time to love and character develpment. They exist in the movie but for a very short time. As a result, they can’t make me feel anything. The Director had the admirable goal of making us an emotional spectator, but because he’s burdened with placing Seven Protagonists behind the Seven Swords, he has only a handful of minutues to offer any kind of substantial backstory to each character. The movie Seven Swords is a really spectacular production with a really great story line and cast. It is just too bad I was let down by the execution, and if you know anything about films, it is all about execution. Perhaps we could get a sequel in the coming years, until then, I’d say you should pass on this unless you are an extreme Donnie Yen fan.