Wuxia Week: Duel to the Death

I will go right out and say it: I love this movie to death. It's the first film that I have rented via Netflix and said 'I need to own this!' Others have certainly followed, but your first time is always the best...or extremely awkward. In many ways, the plot of this movie will seem familiar, at least on the surface, to the film Duel of the Century. While that is true, this movie is 100% its own creation and proud of it. This Chinese-Japanese co-production is really great and you should own it already. Don't believe me? Check out my review of...

Duel to the Death

Our story begins with ninjas running down at a road at Benny Hill-esque speeds. They break into a Shaolin Monastery by way of reversing flip footage and go to work. They browse the library until they find a book they need and copy its text down. During their escape, they are discovered by the Monks and the fight is on! For some reason, the Elders don't want our hero to fight, but he ignores them eventually. It all moves down to the beach where the ninjas bury the script in the sand go all Taliban on the monks by suicide-bombing themselves! I bet you didn't see that coming! A bit later, the lead Japanese spokesman visits the Temple in preparation for the annual duel between China and Japan. Being a jerk, he gets dragged into a pointless fight with one of the lead Monks. This is here to show that the Chinese only fight when they must. Jingoism against the Japanese or foreshadowing- you be the judge!

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We are introduced to our Japanese hero by way of him teaching a kid to beat up another one. Hurray? He is very dutiful to his Emperor, another plot point that will come into play later. We also learn that some sort of hijinks are going on behind the scene. The man is attacked by a masked assassin, but kills him...only to learn that it was his master testing him. Japan is a strange place, huh? Meanwhile, we meet the Chinese hero's master: a drunken idiot who flips around and has a parakeet. That added a lot, movie. After the puppeteer scene mentioned earlier, the ninjas return and fight a new lady character introduced earlier. They take back the scroll from the beginning and are joined in battle by our Chinese hero. They retaliate by...throwing salt at them and flipping? Alright then. Both of our heroes meet up the key training area in the province and meet its master...who is sitting on a small boat in the middle of a pond. They jump over to him, but he moves away. This brings us the first insane use of physics. One of them kicks off of his sword blade in mid-air, while the other tosses his sword onto the water's surface and jumps off of it. Wow.

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The ninjas take center stage at this point and they are freaking awesome. The Master from the school earlier is attacked by a giant ninja. If you freeze frame it, the effect is gone though. The giant splits into four ninjas who...burrow into the ground like Bugs Bunny. They fly out at times and attack him. Okay, where is Stephen Chow's hand in this film? The last one leaps and reveals...a naked lady ninja who throws a net on the man. A little bit later, a fighter with a bad gray wig is attacked by a group of ninjas riding in on kites. Seriously? At a grave site of fallen warriors, some ninjas explode out of the ground and attack our heroes! They fly around like Peter Pan, but still fail. At one point, they even do the old 'poison on a string' drop bit! We learn that the Japanese have sent in these ninjas to capture all the warriors that are naturally drawn to the fight. The Chinese man pursues them through the woods as they fly with the boxes of warriors (really) by way of flipping around in tightly-edited shots. When he gets back, he finds the Master has had his legs cut off and runs in...to a trap? We learn via monologue that the man was actually born without legs and had hid it for his entire life. What hell the?!?

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The movie features what I call the greatest 5 seconds of Cinematic History. The Japanese man cuts one ninja from head to toe in one swing and stabs another one that is behind him. That man's body explodes...for some reason and the hero falls to the ground. A moment later, he stabs the ground, causing blood to fly out from a hidden ninja. Top that!

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All of the men are rescued from the ninja and the evil plotter meets an interesting, bloody end. I won't spoil that whole thing for you here. When the Chinese man refuses to fight now, the Japanese man kills the old master. See- I told you that plot point would come back, didn't I? They fight and holy crap is it bloody! Both men flip around and get wounded all over. Their action causes the rocks beneath them to shatter! Our Chinese hero gets one arm lopped off and loses all of the fingers on his other hand! Maybe you shouldn't grab the blade with your hand, dude! In the end, both men are bleeding all over, but who wins? The movie never tells us as it awkwardly freeze-frames. Um, you decide? The End.

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Do you see why I love this movie? It has ninjas flipping everywhere and turning into giant people! People get cut up all the time in flashy and bloody fashion. There is some silly stuff and real stodgy stuff in there (like the bit where the duo discuss their national plants for a moment), but it is easily forgiven for the action. On top of that, the DVD actually has a good transfer and *shock* the original audio track with subtitles. I don't know if any editing was done, but it does not feel like it. If you want to see kite ninjas, go get this movie already. What's stopping you? Not me.

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Up next, Jet Li learns kung-fu from a man chained to a giant rock. Intrigued? Stay tuned...