Seven Swords


Epic.

What is it with the number seven? Apart from the number five, there's no other number for a group of heroes as heroic as seven. It all started with Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which probably was the template for every other seven-man army film since; from cowboys (The Magnificent Seven) to space warriors (Battle Beyond the Stars), the group of seven has been seen in epic struggles of the few and courageous good versus far greater numbers of evil.

Well, yet another epic film of seven heroes comes to the screen, via Tsui Hark's Seven Swords. The film is an adaptation of the first part of a series of Chinese novels, so we can expect more to come if Mr. Hark has his way. Anyway, Seven Swords is the director's answer to the past wave of Wuxia films, which includes Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers (each of which have varying levels of goodness for me...).

Seven Swords' premise is classic- in ancient China, the emperor has decreed that martial arts will be banned to preserve the peace. To enforce his edict, armies of mercenaries have been empowered with the freedom to kill and pillage as they please, to bring the heads of any known martial artists (bodies not necessary) to the emperor. Of course, this is not something that can just go about without getting people rightly angry, so seven heroes soon come together to protect a village being threatened by a madman and his army of bloodthirsty killers. Each of the heroes wields a weapon of power- a sword, each with a name like 'Celestial', or 'Dragon'. As you can imagine, these swords can kick butt and they will see a lot of evildoers sliced to ribbons before this epic first chapter of the series is over. Given that Tsui Hark has directed stuff like Once Upon a Time in China and other martial arts classics before, Seven Swords should be something to see.

The film hasn't been released stateside yet, but with the recent successes of Asian films, it's sure to make it over here soon. Look for this in the DVD bins... this looks pretty cool.