Thursday, September 3, 2009

Poor Bastards of Cinema: Duel to the Death

There are many great heroes in the genre of Wuxia and many great villains. Somewhere between all of them are the random civilians that just exist in the towns that are being ravaged/enslaved/pillaged. Are they at fault? 99% of the time- no. I leave that margin of 1% for those who 'want to be heroes.' You know who you are, shopkeepers that stand up to random thugs from the Emperor! Anyhow, it would be easy to find a random guy who gets killed for no good reason in any of these movies. To really prove my point, I have a really good example from one of my favorite movies of all time and tomorrow's review. This comes to you from...
Duel to the Death
Don't let the uber-generic title fool you- this movie has so much for you. Wait until tomorrow for the full synopsis. This is the basic summary of what you need to know: Japan and China hold an annual duel between their two greatest swordsman. Only this time, some evil is afoot. Now here is why it makes the list.
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As the Japanese fighter arrives, lots of people have come in to see it. One Chinese man runs a puppet show depicting a comedic version of the event. One pair of Japanese men take offense at this and attack the man. Way to not take a joke, dude! They even kill the guy! Fortunately, the swordsman kills them in a very indirect way: by handing a knife to the widow and kicking a man into said 'knife.' You were a complete jerk...and now you are dead. Good job.
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Up next, a less-than-Special update. Wait- that sounded wrong. Stay tuned...

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