| Forgiveness is a virtue, but sometimes, a man’s got to pick up two daggers and kill the SOB who stole his magic sword, blinded him, killed his parents, set fire to his house and stole his baby.
I’m not making this list up. That’s what actually happens in Sword of Swords (1968), an astonishing swordplay melodrama starring Hong Kong superstar Jimmy Wang Yu. In fact, that’s only an abridged version of the stuff Jimmy goes through before deciding that enough’s enough.
Jimmy Wang Yu had just shot to international fame the previous year, by starring in One-Armed Swordsman (1967), in which he plays a virtuous and slow-to-anger sword fighter. Of course in that flick, all he loses is one arm, which gets chopped off by his sister when she’s in a bitchy mood. He forgives her, learns to swordfight left-handed and protects the family from bad guys. It’s a fine film, and Jimmy does a great job of playing the long-suffering but stoic hero. One wonders just how much it would take to make this guy angry. Well, in Sword of Swords, we find out.
Sword of Swords sees Jimmy playing another nice guy with unbeatable sword skills, but he’s got both his arms this time. After Jimmy inherits a magic sword of astonishing value and historical importance from his fencing instructor, a selfish classmate of Jimmy’s goes absolutely batshit insane, because he wants the sword for himself. I don’t want to confuse you with a bunch of Chinese names, so I’ll just call the evil student "Dickhead," for reasons that will become abundantly clear.
Before the old master dies, he makes Jimmy promise to keep the "Sword of swords" away from Dickhead and to deliver it to a legendary hero named Wang Puke (yikes, unfortunate name, dude). He also orders Jimmy to kill Dickhead, which is a task the gentle soul just can’t bring himself to do. Letting Dickhead go, Jimmy settles down with his family, waiting for Wang Puke to come pick up his goddamn magic sword so that we can all relax. Naturally, Dickhead has other ideas.
First, Dickhead kidnaps Jimmy’s wife and keeps her as a concubine. Then he kills Jimmy’s parents and burns his house down. When Jimmy comes home and sees the smoking wreckage, he rushes in to save his baby, giving Dickhead the opportunity to steal the sword. Then he throws darts into both of Jimmy’s eyes, and impales him on a bamboo stump. When Jimmy tries to get up, Dickhead pushes him back onto the bamboo spike with his foot. Daaaaaaaamn.
Left for dead, Jimmy lifts himself up off the bamboo splinter, and drags his blind ass into town, where a nice family takes him in and keeps him hidden from Dickhead’s henchmen, who are scouring the village for him. At this point, Jimmy still doesn’t want revenge – he just wants to stay the hell away from this psycho and live a semi-normal life. For a while, things go pretty well. His wife escapes and finds him, and he learns how to get by without his eyesight – even learning how to fully observe his environment using hearing alone. His fighting skills return, and he can nail falling leaves to the wall by throwing knives at them. Mind you, he’s not honing his skills with revenge in mind; he’s just enjoying overcoming his disability.
Well, Dickhead finds out where he’s hiding, kidnaps his wife, baby and friends, and sends henchmen to kill him. Now Jimmy’s pissed. He picks up two daggers and goes to the bad guy’s meeting place, where he steps into a booby trap and gets rushed by about 100 swordsmen.
(I’m about to spoil the ending here, but it doesn’t matter, because you’ll probably never find a copy of this movie anyway.)
Jimmy frees himself from the booby trap, and wades into Dickhead’s army like a human chainsaw. Blood sprays everywhere. Dickhead watches from a safe distance, where he has Jimmy’s surviving family bound and gagged. He starts chucking the prisoners in Jimmy’s direction, saying "here come the men who killed your family" and Jimmy kills them because he’s blind and can’t tell the difference! Jimmy starts blindly slashing at his own wife and her gag falls out, so she can finally tell him what’s happening. A look of unimaginable shock and grief crosses Jimmy’s face, while Dickhead laughs, throws the baby at him and tells him it’s another dart! Jimmy catches the infant safely, and kills off the rest of the army while the wife recuperates at a safe distance. Then it’s a showdown between Jimmy and Dickhead, made difficult by the hero’s blindness and the villain’s magic sword, each swing of which generates a gust of wind mighty enough to knock over trees.
Egad. Should action movies make audiences whimper? |
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