The sword of destiny

As the title may suggest, this movie tries to be an epic, fantasy-like, romantic, fighting mixture. Sadly for me, or anyone who should watch this movie, The sword of destiny may try hard, but it never quite gets there. The reason might be all those stiff and at the same time overly exaggerated Asian actors trying to speak English, or the badly written script, or the badly written storyline lacking any attention span whatsoever. The thing is this movie kind of sucks… ass… but I’m going to tell you why I liked it anyway.

First of all everything is beautiful. Starting with the actors. I don’t mean that they are Hollywood hot, but more like an attractive/naieve kind of beautiful. The actress who plays ‘Snow Vase’ (haha yes I know right..) has an almost intimidating vibe going on just by looking into the camera. The one who plays ‘Silver Dart Shi’ has a playful cheekyness about her that is just enchanting and then there is Han Mei, who is just so terribly enthralling that I don’t even have words to describe her. To tip it off we have a male actor playing ‘Wei Fang’ who looks like he just stepped out of a very well drawn anime. Apart from the actors, the sceneries and fighting are magnificent too.

Let’s talk about the fighting. The movements are executed so elegantly that the fighters look like they are dancing. Perfectly focussed they attack each other in a battle of beauty. The best thing about this movie? The girls fight so much better than the boys! You could say they’ve got the whole emancipation thing figured out, were it not that the final ‘big fight’ is between men. Nevertheless it is definately more badass to see a woman slay some kind of freakishly scary blinded ghost witch. Oh and did I tell you yet that they can fly!? They silently glide-jump through air like super saiyan ninja’s! How cool is that!?

Throughout the movie the fighting scenes take place in the most marvelous locations. The story starts at this beautiful mountain peak where allegedly one of the characters was murdered by the evil villain of the story. In the picture, the woman who was once to wed this “dead” guy is nostalgically remembering him. (Excuse the quality, I needed to take pictures of the screen because my Netflix didn’t allow me to make screen shots)

Oh poor woman.. Anyway, on to the next great site. Here we see the beautiful ‘Snow Vase’ practising her sword fighting skills in the court yard of the house where the Sword of Destiny is kept. Pay attention to the amazingly fitting cherry blossom tree.

Isn’t it lovely? I would love a court yard like that, but with a little less bloodshed and without the cage, which our handsome male actor is shoved into for like… half the movie. The next scene is from a very well made fight on ice! The frozen water breaks, ice blocks flying about, creating an exciting and terrifying spot to kickass. But more importantly, giving us viewers a enticing scene to watch.

Brrrr… on to the last one before we freeze out butts off. The final fight takes place at this huge tower. In this tower, the cool woman beats the scary witch. Outside, all the other warrior/ninja/kung fu fighters kill each other with intense precision and the two male fighters decide to take each other on right on top of the tower. The immense force of their power crumbles most of the tower down, boom, slash, epic!

Look at them fall… I think I have made my point. Watch this movie if you like epic, flying, ninja-kung fu fighting, beautiful stuff wrapped up in a a badly written and acted story.