Duel to the Death

Every ten years the best swordsmen of China and Japan meet in a duel. This time it is Bo Ching-wan for China and Hashimoto for Japan. Both approach it with respect. The powers behind them do not: ninjas raid temples, sword manuals are stolen, and the duel turns into a political trap. Tony Ching Siu-tung directs, in his first film as director. Until then he was known for fight choreography. What the film does is treated as a threshold in wuxia: it uses wire flight at a scale nobody had seen and detaches the fighting from gravity entirely. Ching Siu-tung developed that language over the following years in A Chinese Ghost Story and the Swordsman films, and much of the visual signature of Hong Kong cinema in that period comes from him. Its tone departs from genre habit. Neither fighter is the other's enemy, and both understand that their own side is using them. The ending is therefore not a victory but a shared defeat. The ninja material, and particularly the giant ninja that comes apart, is what gets discussed most and is completely insane. Who it is for: viewers curious about eighties Hong Kong action and the origins of wire choreography. Who it is not for: anyone wanting realism. The film obeys no law of physics and offers no excuse for it.