The Blade of Flower (2019)

The Blade of Flower (2019)
Chinese Title: 快刀斩
Translation: Quick Knife Cut

 

Starring: Qiu Xiaochan, Yu Lei, Meng Haoqiang, Wen Donghai, Zhang Xiaofei, Fang Xingye, Wang Miao
Director: Gao Bo
Action Directors: Gu Changfu, Lin Qiang

And here we go again. It has become almost comical just how hard it is for Mainland Chinese filmmakers to make decent martial arts and wuxia films these days. Nobody seems to know what they are doing anymore. It's mind-boggling! Take The Blade of Flower for instance. It could have been a standard revenge drama with some good fight scenes and a very Eastern bent, with a subplot delving into the mechanics of violence and revenge in comparison to the tenets of peace that defines Buddhism. Instead, we have this film that so blatantly rips off other movies--more than that in a moment--that I really spent the movie asking myself what the next target was going to be.

Tell me if you have seen this before. Liu Yetao (Qiu Xiaochan) is an assassin to who decides to give up the killing business and marry a nice young man. At her wedding, her old buddies, led by Master Chu (Meng Haoqiang) show up slaughter everybody in the house, cut up Liu very badly, and leave her for dead. She recovers several months later and decides to get revenge on her former colleagues? Does that sound familiar? No? 

Well, how about her beginning her quest by seeking out a master swordsman (Ye Fang) who has long sinced retired and convincing him to forge one last sword for her? After that she visits one of her targets, only to discover that the woman has settled down and gotten married? And what about the whole bit in which every time she sees one of her colleagues, she flashes back to the moment that particular person stabbed her at the wedding?

But that could be any film, right? So I won't even mention that one of her targets is a guy who gets the drop on her. And then he wants to steal her sword. And finally he tries to bury her alive...

Yeah, The Blade of Flower is largely a beat-for-beat rip-off of Kill Bill. It was not obvious at first, but once Sister Liu goes to the retired swordsman/blacksmith to coax him into providing her with her death weapon, it was obvious where it was going. The major subplot--or parallel story--involves a young monk (Yu Lei) who has left his temple in order to gain experience in the world around him. Specifically, he has to find someone who needs spiritual assistance and help that person onto the right path. The monk chooses Sister Liu, trying to help her to not kill her enemies so as to make up for her earlier sins. Whenever the movie isn't stealing from Quentin Tarantino--kinda strange when you think about it: it's like The Matrix borrowing from anime and Hong Kong movies, and then Ryuhei Kitamura stealing from that--it gets into these shallow, repetitive conversations about the futility of revenge and violence.

Mr. Tarantino need not worry about this yawn-inducing knock-off. Qiu Xiaohan, who has mostly done TV work, plays her role stoically like most post-CTHD actors tend to do. There are some light moments provided by the young monk--I guess his naïveté is supposed to be funny--and his interactions with the local constable (Wen Donghai). The running joke is that the constable is about to retire, so the monk's insistence that they get involved in Sister Liu's quest for revenge drives him up the wall. Those scenes aren't offensively stupid, but they do clash with the seriousness with which the other performers treat the material. 

The action choreography is brought to you by Gu Changfu and Lin Qiang. The latter cut his teeth as a stuntman on period pieces like the Red Cliff movies and Saving General Yang. He also was a stuntman on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. I'm guessing that he learned all the wrong lessons from the likes of Yuen Woo-Ping, Corey Yuen and Stephen Tung Wai. Meanwhile, Gu Changfu was a stuntman on Seven Swords and Battle of Wits. This leads me to believe that both men were, to some extent, trained by Stephen Tung Wai. If so, they were bad students. The fights in this film are so derivative that they could tell you the point of inflection on a polynomial. Take the fight in the prison cell between Sister Liu and a female assassin, played by Wang Miao. It's less of a fight and more proof that Gu and Lin like Zhang Yimou movies, with the emphasis on water dripping from chains in slow motion, feet stepping in water (in slow motion), and finally the villainess swinging a razor-sharp umbrella (too soon, people!). We know that Hero and Shadow were good movies. You don't need to remind us. Another fight has Sister Liu dueling with a second female assassin, played by Fang Xingye (who looks like a Zhou Xun clone), while balancing on bamboo trees. Yes, CTHD was a good movie. No need to remind of that. The other fights (what few there are) tend to suffer from too much slow motion or too many quick cuts when filmed at normal speed.

The Kill Bill films were a pastiche of Quentin Taratino's favorite 1970s grindhouse genres. The Blade of Flower simply rips off numerous important martial arts films from the early 2000s, making it a poster child for The Law of Diminishing Returns. By the time we reach this particular iteration, the whole exercise is quite simply pointless.