Brotherhood of Blades

绣春刀

China, 2014, colour, 2.35:1, 106 mins.

Director: Lu Yang 路阳.

Rating: 8/10.

Top-notch martial-arts drama boasts a meaty script and performances to match.

STORY

Beijing, AD 1627, the last years of the Ming dynasty. When the teenage Chongzhen Emperor (Ye Xiangming) takes over the throne from his late brother, he expels Wei Zhongxian (Jin Shijie), the chief eunuch who had held enormous power as head of the dreaded Eastern Depot secret police, and starts to move against Wei Zhongxian’s “Eunuch Clique” that made up some 70% of court officials. The emperor instructs a group of jinyiwei 锦衣卫 (military secret police), led by Shen Lian (Zhang Zhen), to arrest Xu Xianchun (Lv Ying), who is being sheltered at the home of a noble, Chen. Shen Lian works for the North Zhenfu Division of the jinyiwei, along with his colleagues Lu Jianxing (Wang Qianyuan) and the younger Jin Yichuan (Li Dongxue). Privately, Shen Lian is in love with a courtesan, Zhou Miaotong (Liu Shishi), whose freedom he is saving up to buy; Lu Jianxing is hungry for promotion, and is bribing their immediate superior, Zhang Ying (Qiao Lei), to arrange it; and Jin Yichuan is being blackmailed by a former friend, Ding Xiu (Zhou Yiwei), over their shared criminal past. Ding Xiu gives Jin Yichuan three days to come up with 100 taels of silver, or else. The new head of the Eastern Depot, Zhao Jingzhong (Nie Yuan), orders Shen Lian, Lu Jianxing and Jin Yichuan to pursue Wei Zhongxian, who left the capital two days earlier, and kill him, on the emperor’s orders. They catch up with Wei Zhongxian at an inn in Fucheng county, where he’s guarded by loyal retainers led by his daughter Wei Ting (Zhu Dan); during the fighting, Shen Lian confronts Wei Zhongxian, who offers him 400 taels of gold for his freedom and adds that Shen Lian is a mere pawn in a larger power struggle. Shen Lian announces that Wei Zhongxian has died from self-immolation, and the charred corpse is taken back to Beijing. The new cabinet grand secretary, Han Kuang (Zhao Lixin), is dubious whether the corpse is really that of Wei Zhongxian, though Zhao Jingzhong supports his men in their insistence that it is. Soon afterwards, Zhao Jingzhong is summoned by a still-living Wei Zhongxian – who is actually his foster-father – and ordered to kill Shen Lian, who alone knows he is alive. Meanwhile, Jin Yichuan falls for his doctor’s daughter, Zhang Yan (Ye Qing), and Shen Lian discovers Zhou Miaotong is really in love not with him but with a noble’s son, Yan Junbin (Yang Yi). To get rid of Shen Lian, Zhao Jingzhong sends him on a seemingly impossible mission to arrest the heavily-guarded chief censor, Yan Peiwei (Hu Xiaoguang), who is Yan Junbin’s father. Though Yan Peiwei ends up dead thanks to Zhao Jingzhong’s secret orders to Zhang Ying, Shen Lian and his two friends survive, and take Yan Junbin in for interrogation. As a reward, Shen Lian demands of Zhang Ying that the three of them are transferred south to Nanjing. At a subsequent dinner, Han Kuang announces that Lu Jianxing is to be promoted, but that there will be an autopsy on the charred corpse of Wei Zhongxian to prove whether it is really him. Panicking, Shen Lian tells Lu Jianxing and Jin Yichuan that he took a bribe from Wei Zhongxian to fake his death, as he needed the money to buy Zhou Miaotong’s freedom and help Jin Yichuan pay off Ding Xiu. The trio’s friendship survives the revelation, but Zhao Jingzhong, nervous about the forthcoming autopsy, plans more trouble for Shen Lian, Lu Jianxing and Jin Yichuan.

REVIEW

A top-notch costume action drama, driven by a meaty script and performances rather than by visual effects and star turns, Brotherhood of Blades 绣春刀 is the most satisfying Chinese wuxia movie since Reign of Assassins 剑雨 (2010). As well as taking an inventive spin on familiar material – heroes battling the Ming dynasty’s secret police, a wuxia staple since Dragon Gate Inn 龙门客栈 (1967) by Hu Jinquan [King Hu] – it also has the bonus for genre fans of capturing the classic essence of the martial-arts novel, despite (like Assassins) not actually being based on one. Though Assassins pips it by a point, thanks to more memorable fight sequences, there’s little to choose between the two at a script level: Blades packs in an enormous amount of plot with few signs of over-crowding, and resolves its complex web of alliances, personal conflicts and compromised backgrounds to powerful effect in the second half.

Released in China in August [2014], with relatively little fanfare and a poor marketing campaign that harmed its box office in a strong field, the film is an even more pleasant surprise given its origins. Beijing-born writer-director Lu Yang 路阳, who began his career in the mid-’00s with shorts and scripting TV dramas, drew minor attention on the festival circuit for his first feature, My Spectacular Theatre 盲人电影院 (2010, centred on the cute idea of a cinema for blind people), and followed it with the largely-unseen road movie, A Motor Home Adventure 前任告急 (2012), still unreleased in China. [It was finally released, on the heels of Brotherhood, on 14 Oct 2014 under the titles Ex Fighting 房车奇遇.] The script for Blades was in fact already written at the time of Theatre but only attracted funding when Taiwan star Zhang Zhen 张震 committed to the project. With China Film investing RMB30 million, the film ended up being shot in only 67 days – a tight schedule given the large amount of set-ups required by Lu’s more edgy approach.

Lead written by Chen Shu 陈舒, 32, who also scripted Lu’s Theatre and Motor Home (as well as the fluffy female racing driver drama Speed Angels 极速天使, 2011), the film takes the real-life story of the fall of powerful Ming Dynasty eunuch Wei Zhongxian and embellishes it with a what-if fictional plot. The notoriously ruthless Wei Zhongxian, who controlled the Ming’s secret police as well as much of the imperial court, has been featured in or provided inspiration for numerous Chinese martial arts movies; in Blades he’s not the lead character, but his mercilessness and venality inform the whole movie as the writers ask, “What if he hadn’t committed suicide after his fall, and instead bribed a secret-police enforcer to fake his death?”

In her reimagining of the era, Chen makes Blades not a straightforward martial-arts yarn of heroes vs villains, of chivalry vs evil. Every character is compromised in some way, including the central “heroic” trio of jinyiwei 锦衣卫 (the “embroidered-uniform guard” that formed the Ming’s military secret police) who decide to take on the continuing corruption at the imperial court following Wei Zhongxian’s fall from power. Stuck with paltry salaries, each of the three needs money for personal reasons – to buy a courtesan’s freedom, to pay off a blackmailer, and to bribe a superior into recommending promotion. As they’re charged by the new, teenage emperor into weeding out Wei Zhongxian’s past supporters, they’re also in hock to Wei Zhongxian’s powerful successors, blurring the moral boundaries.

At a time when the martial arts genre has become more a vehicle for star turns and elaborate visual effects, Lu has gone for a relatively low-key cast, in which Zhang is the biggest name and Hong Kong actors aren’t used for box-office ballast. A variable actor who needs careful direction to shine, the 37-year-old pin-up is well cast here as a jinyiwei who gambles his career on a courtesan who’s not all she seems; Zhang’s internal style of acting actually fits the part here, and his character is given no special prominence over those of his two buddies – an older, ambitious colleague, craftily played by hatchet-faced Wang Qianyuan 王千源 (the accordionist in The Piano in a Factory 钢的琴, 2010), and a younger former criminal, likably played by TV actor Li Dongxue 李东学, 31. With Wang’s character often given more prominence, the trio’s “brotherhood” isn’t a matinee-idol thing, and evolves slowly throughout the film to reach a surprisingly affecting finale.

On the male side, the three leads are also often out-performed by others – notably Taiwan sexagenarian Jin Shijie 金士杰 as a wonderfully evil Wei Zhongxian, and, more subtly, Mainland actors Zhou Yiwei 周一围 (who co-starred with Jin in Theatre) as a cocky blackmailer and Nie Yuan 聂远, 36, who steps impressively into the spotlight here as the new secret police chief after several years in costume character roles. On the female side, ballet-student-turned-actress Liu Shishi 刘诗诗 (Sad Fairy Tale 伤心童话, 2012; Badges of Fury 不二神探, 2013) gives her most substantial performance to date as the conflicted courtesan, with some fine scenes opposite Zhang in the second half, while Ye Qing 叶青 and Zhu Dan 朱丹 are more constrained in smaller roles as a perky doctor’s daughter and Wei Zhongxian’s tomboyish daughter. Zhu, who played the policewoman in Motor Home, gets disappointingly short shrift, especially in the finale.

Technical credits are classy, showing the Mainland’s increasing independence from Hong Kong expertise. Costumes by Liang Tingting 梁婷婷 – who worked on the less successful genre spins The Sword Identity 倭寇的踪迹 (2011) and Judge Archer 箭士柳白猿 (2012) – again have a fresh, unfamiliar look, and action sequences, though not knock-out, combine close-quarter grit with martial arts expertise, notably in two courtyard fights. Visual effects are largely limited to spurts of blood and flying arrows, with nothing more distracting, and the score by Chinese American composer Wang Zongxian 王宗贤 [Nathan Wang] adds a sense of simmering, pregnant drama to support the personal conflict.

The film’s Chinese title, literally “Embroidered Spring Blade”, refers to a type of sword carried by the jinyiwei. The same historical period is dealt with exhaustively in the 40-part TV drama Ming Dynasty 天下 (2006), directed by onetime arthouse director Wu Ziniu 吴子牛 (The Last Day of Winter 最后一个冬日, 1986; Evening Bell 晚钟, 1988).

CREDITS

Presented by China Film (CN), Central Studio of News Reels Production (CN), Beijing Dachuchangge Film & TV Culture (CN), Combo Drive Pictures (CN). Produced by China Film (CN), Combo Drive Pictures (CN).

Script: Chen Shu, Lu Yang. Photography: Han Qiming. Editing: Zhu Liyun, Tu Yiran. Music: Wang Zongxian [Nathan Wang]. End song: Wang Zongxian [Nathan Wang], Ren Yingjie. Vocal: Wang Yuling. Art direction: Zhao Yu. Costume design: Liang Tingting. Sound: Long Xiaozhu, Xiong Yi. Action: Sang Lin. Martial arts: Gao Ruigang, Lei Zhiqiang. Visual effects: Liu Yuan. Steadicam: Pan Zhen. Executive direction: Lv Ying.

Cast: Zhang Zhen (Shen Lian), Liu Shishi (Zhou Miaotong, courtesan), Wang Qianyuan (Lu Jianxing), Li Dongxue (Jin Yichuan), Nie Yuan (Zhao Jingzhong, head of secret police), Jin Shijie (Wei Zhongxian), Ye Qing (Zhang Yan, doctor’s daughter), Zhou Yiwei (Ding Xiu), Zhu Dan (Wei Ting, Wei Zhongxian’s daughter), Zhao Lixin (Han Kuang, cabinet grand secretary), Qiao Lei (Zhang Ying), Yang Yi (Yan Junbin), Gu Dian (Chen Jiaming), Ye Xiangming (Chongzhen Emperor), Yang Xiaobo (Chen Jiamo), Zhang Zhenlei (older soldier), Liu Chang (younger soldier), Hu Xiaoguang (Yan Peiwei, Yan Junbin’s father), Dong Hao (schoolboy), Xu Li (Xue, brothel madame), Huang Da (Zhao Jingzhong’s guard), Lv Ying (Xu Xianchun), Sun Yulei (Lin Chong), Zhao Lin (Chen’s wife), Song Xin Jiayi (Chen’s daughter), Liu Xiujie (Lu Jianxing’s mother).

Release: China, 7 Aug 2014.

(Review first published on Film Business Asia, 22 Sep 2014.)