Sometimes movies just make up elaborate plots and have no way to do them justice. The whole thing is built around one or two reveals, leaving everything else to suffer. I will leave M. Night out of this...for now. In the meantime, I will stick with this kung-fu film that turned out to be so much more than I thought...
If you expect an in-depth plot summary, you may be disappointed. This movie's basic plot is so generic and pointless that you could simply guess it. That is not the reason I am covering it.*
Our hero is a one-armed man, but never carries a sword- ever. Also, he is not the same guy from the many films (One-Armed Swordsman, Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman, etc). Although he is played by Jimmy Wang Yu, the star of Master of the Flying Guillotine. I just had to say that.*
The enigmatic man is a long journey for revenge against those that have wounded him. He has to fight the titular killers and engage in some wu xia action. Now that I have that part out of the way, here is the crazy stuff.
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~At one point, our hero battles a transsexual. Not a man dressed in drag, but an actual person with gender identity disorder. He also appears to be post-op...which is highly impossible in feudal China.
~He has a fight with one killer in their private sword room. Still, he never uses a blade. That guy picks up the most improbable sword ever though. He has a six-foot blade, which he actually attempts to use. What are you, Cloud?
~Here is the big thing though. During the fight with the final boss, our hero gets his lone arm lopped off. Well, now he is royally-screwed, right? No! He stabs the man with another arm, revealing that he kept his other arm hidden for years. That is patience and follow-through!
~As he relaxes, the lady he brought with him stabs him. Why? She was the daughter of the man he killed. In spite of this, he kills her too. The End.
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Okay, what the hell was all of that? This is not a One-Armed Swordsman film, since he has one arm cut off in battle in that movie. That sort of kills the big plot reveal, doesn't it? Apparently, this centers around a whole conflict between Yu, Shaw and the ownership of the character. Shaw made two films with Yu and a couple without him. They hired a new guy, so Yu made the crossover film with Zatoichi in Japan. Later still, he made a film with his replacement called The One-Armed SwordsMEN. Read it all here. This title is a marketing lie and a bad one. The film is fun to watch though.*
Are you ready for Canada to kill your childhood for frights? Stay tuned...
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