Seven Swords
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.00 You Save: $8.97 (69%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.26 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Seven Swords
Movie Review: Seven Swords
Summary: 4 Stars
Seven Swords is one of those marshal art movies that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Never a dull moment and when you think you figure it out something else is thrown at you that changes your thinking. Great movie and I recommend watching it.Movie Review: Dragon Dynasty's release of Seven Swords
Summary: 3 Stars
What starts out as a very violent and interesting movie ends up sort of floating the rest of the way. They don't have a lot of character development. Some characters you will understand but most will leave you with a lot of questions. Even Donnie Yen's character who they probably went the most in depth on didn't get full treatment. Maybe it was just that he was speaking Korean bugged me. It is just weird. There is nothing to really carry the story, except the General who is always going to come after the seven swordsmen and the villagers they are protecting. While the violence is well done and the General's top soldiers are truly wicked and have great battle sequences, everything else is just way too standard. The villian is ruthless and just cruel as he can be, the heroes are all very honorable, just nothing really exciting happens. The villain was by far my favorite character but he is not the main character. The acting is good and has some very nice touches with Lau Kar Leung playing Fu and Jason Pao Paio playing the leader of the town. The soundtrack is great. The locations and cinematography are stunning. Costumes really don't get any better than this. I liked the unique editing. The special effects are great and it was done by Weta Workshop who did the CGI for The Lord Of the Rings movies. Unfortunately all of this cannot overcome a story that just doesn't draw you in. By the end of it you realize that the swords were the main story which I liked and the final fight isn't too bad. Actually, the action starts out very well but doesn't really get good again until the end. You will most likely want to watch this movie again since its not half bad, it just doesn't make complete sense. After seeing it once and watching it again, for me there will be no 3rd viewing. I would no doubt watch a part 2 if Tsui Hark ever decides to makes it but I have heard talk of this ever since this "first part" was made and after a while it is too easy to forget about a movie project. I found the TV show 'Seven Swordsmen' with Vincent Zhao and Ada Choi much more enjoyable. Of course, it had a lot more time to explain the characters being 39 one hour episodes long. I was hoping to buy this movie and prove the other reviewers wrong but it just didn't happen. Luckily there are enough extras on this to keep me busy for a while.
Dragon Dynasty puts outs out the uncut version as opposed to the shortened version which is widely distributed. The sound and picture are truly some of the best you will find. 5.1 English and 5.1 with the original soundtrack. When the Dragon Sword gets pulled out expect a roar from the subwoofer. It is sad how neither Dragon Dynasty or Image's releases have had the subtitles properly in the black bars with all of them being widescreened. I suppose this is minor.
Special features include a feature commentary with the director of the movie Tsui Hark and Hong Kong film expert Bey Logan. That is 154 minutes with these 2. Very enjoyable. While I didn't love the movie, you may have, and this is the best special feature you could ever imagine. Not to mention the rest of the extras.
Six extended and deleted scenes and one 10 minute alternate take(final fight). Best part of this is that we get WAYYYYY more Donnie Yen action.
Four 5-7 minute behind the scenes featurettes.
Interviews include 45 minutes from Tsui Hark. Talk about in depth, with the commentary you get 200 minutes of interview time with the director. He knows there were problems with the movie as a whole and is not afraid to talk about any of it. Can't really complain about this special feature.
26 minutes with Donnie Yen. He talks about what is was like playing his character and gives his thoughts on the director and the movie.
18 minutes with Zhang Jing Chu talking about where she grew up and how she became an actress. I love the quote on her childhood about being 3 years older than the other people in her class. She says "her parents wanted her to be simply outstanding." At 16 years old she wants to become an artist which her parents disagree with. She ends up running away! Wonderful interview.
26 minutes with Duncan Lai talking about his windsurfing career and getting into the movies. Nice to get all the info provided here since I have never heard of him before.
Amazingly all of these interviews are English. I guess it is just a coincidence that they all spoke the langauge.
There is also a making of that is about 20 minutes long and is accompanied by some very good music. This includes interviews and a look behind the scenes. Steve Tung Wai and Xin Xin Xiong are the credited action directors but I only saw Lau Kar Leung in all of the behind the scenes featurettes and this making of special feature. I guess it is just a given that Master Lau and Donnie Yen had a hand in the action. In the commentary though, they actually do credit Lau with the biggest part of the action and planning everything.
I wish the movie was good enough to give it a rating of at least a 4 but the DVD itself gets a 5 star rating for the amount of special features and the quality of it overall.
Movie Review: Is It The Swords Or The Editing
Summary: 3 Stars
Based in the In the mid 1600's Seven Swords revolves around death, greed, and of course seven heroes. The Manchurians have taken over China and built the Qing Dynasty. The new government is banning the practice of Martial Arts fearing that the villages that practice it could rebel. This ban is far worst than you can imagine, the services of the Fire-Wind army are acquired to help make this law certain. The only thing the army cares about is money and they make a profit off eliminating entire villages that practice martial arts to make sure a martial artists never walks the earth again. The next village is the final frontier, Martial Village and Fire-Wind has their eyes set on it. After learning this information from an old man named Fu Qingzhu (Liu Chia-Liang) escaping Fire-Wind to save the art. You may remember Liu from Drunken Master 2.
In seek of help Fu accompanied by two villagers go searching for the Heavenly Mountains. Heavenly Mountains give them help, 4 fighters and seven swords. Three swords go to Fu and the two villagers but the only one of them who is truly skilled is Fu. After receiving this help the seven swords hurry back to the village but do they get there in time. The three star rating was a hard one to decide on simply because this is a great movie but things are missing. The biggest being that the movie is edited to about 2 hours and 33 minutes but the original unedited film is said to be about 4 hours long. The editing is horrible; too much scene jumping and you feel like you missed things throughout the entire movie. You'll be sitting there asking questions like when did they get there or do that? Who is that? And when did he learn to do that?
Now of course since this is called "Seven Swords" the comparisons with "Seven Samurai" may come flying and yea it's like it and no it's not as good but this is still a descent film. If Dragon Dynasty were to put a second disc in the case with the unedited version like they did with "The Protector" this movie would get a way higher rating from me. I have so many things I loved about this movie though one being the amazing fight scenes and choreography. Donnie Yen was the best of them all and his character also got most of the spotlight. The things they thought up for this movie is sick, like sword fights in tight cramped spaces, which may sound impossible, but they definitely pulled it off.
The acting was really good, the camera angles were great, and though the picture was cool it could've been better lit. I understand that bad character development may kill the movie a bit for some which is another thing that can probably be chalked up to the bad editing. The cool thing is that this could definitely be mad into a sequel; I think there is a plan to make a couple more. The characters sure so good that they could have their own movie after these films especially Donnie Yen who deserves one. Seven Swords is a film that could be great if that other hour and 30 minutes can be put back in but for right now take it as it is cause it's worth seeing.
Movie Review: An Ambitious Story. Maybe Too Ambitious.
Summary: 3 Stars
This was a movie I wanted to like more than I actually did. The production quality, and the cinematography grabs the hand of this movie and leads it down the road of masterpiece. But it's either the story or the editing that walks with the two left feet along the way. This movie probably needed another hour in order to pull off what it wanted to accomplish -- which is be an Action Story, and not just an Action Movie. The Director had the admirable goal of making us an emotional spectator, but because he's burdened with placing Seven Protagonists behind the Seven Swords, he has only a handful of minutues to offer any kind of substantial backstory to each character. There were times when the subtext of some character seemed to have just emerged out of nowhere. I'd give examples, but to be honest, I can't identify any of the multi-characters by name. so I'll just say, as an example, that "some guy" whose backstory was that of a farmer (I think) seemed to be pretty broken up when it was decided that he had to set his horses free. Especially, the Horse JoyLuck, whose name I can remember. By the way, I'm *not* being sarcastic here. That was really how I approached that scene, since prior to it, I can't recall any build up. Maybe I missed it.
Amazingly, despite the cloudiness of the JoyLuck scene, I was still somewhat moved by it, a sure credit to the cinematography and the heart breaking score by Kenji Kawai. Both do an amazing job of compensating for what I just couldn't gather from the story. I have to believe that juggling seven characters in the writers/directors world is as dangerous as juggling seven swords. And despite my clueless detachment from the motivation of the characters, I enjoyed watching them when they went into battle. My conclusion is that the Writers (Three of them) and the Director knew what they were doing, they just didn't have enough screen-time to pull it off.
Movie Review: Even with Donnie Yem, this feel a bit short
Summary: 3 Stars
The Seven Swords is one of those movies that could have been so much more but fell a bit short. The film has shot itself in the foot with too much plot, confusing sub character plots, plot holes and some very confusing sequences and over complex storytelling. So many characters to get to know, the bad dudes and the origin of these 7 enchanted swords, a lot to digest in one movie when all you want to see is these different fighters and their swords in action.
Let's face it, movies like this are about the action, and when this movie does it right it's really right. A lot of the fight scenes seem to fall short until the end of the film, and then they rock. You get to see all the swords in action and each person use there own skill and techniques that make them unique. The finial fight between the main bad dude and Donnie Yen is worth the price of the movie itself. Some awesome swordplay and flawless wire work, it's just awesome. I don't know if I could sit though this movie again but I pop it in and watch the fight scenes all the time. I love Tsui Hark as a director but this one was filled with too much other stuff. I do love the look of the film and I unfortunately have one of the foreign DVD's with no dubbing, so keeping up with the plot and watching everything happening is a bit difficult. Since it just got an American DVD release I would recommend this to any fan of Donnie Yen or fans of martial arts films that are a bit out of the box. This movie is unique in many ways so it's worth checking out