The Heroic Ones
(1970)
aka: The 13 Masters; Shaolin Masters; 13
Sons of Yellow Dragon
Chinese Title: 十三太保
Translation: Thirteen Court Advisors
Starring: David Chiang, Ti Lung, Ku
Feng, Chen Sing, Chin Han, Pao Chia-Wen, Lo Wai, James Nam Gung-Fan, Lau Gong,
Sung Tuan, Huang Pei-Chih, Wang Kuang-Yu, Chan Chuen, Lau Kar-Wing, Wong Chung,
Lily Li, Bolo Yeung
Director: Chang Cheh
Action Directors: Tong Gaai, Lau Kar-Leung, Lau Kar-Wing
The story proper begins circa 883 AD, with Li Keyong and his sons partying and drinking themselves silly in the presence of other officials, including the weasly Zhu Wen (perennial movie villain Chen Sing, in a role usually reserved for Wei Ping-Ao). A rebel general (Bolo Yeung) shows up at the city gates, challenging the generals to personal combat. A drunken Li Cunxiao (David Chiang), Keyong’s 13th general and former shepherd, takes up the challenge and defeats the brute. This incurs both the jealousy and the ire of Zhu Wen, who retreats to his palace in Bianliang.
The 13 Generals then sneak into Chang’an with the mission to assassinate the rebel king and disperse the enemy army. Things are going well until the 4th and 12th generals get green with envy when they see Li Cunxiao about to complete the mission. They start attacking the guards early and the confusion both prevents them Cunxiao from killing his target and gets everybody trapped in the city. Only the timely intervention of a young woman (played by Lily Li) playing the role of Rahab saves the men from capture and execution.
All of this accounts for the first half of a two-hour film, one of the longer kung fu epics of the 1970s. The second half is practically a different film, in which the ambitious Zhu Wen—who in real life would end up toppling the Tang Dynasty himself and starting the infamous “Five Dynasties, Ten Kingdoms” period—tries to get Li Keyong and his sons out of the way, as their loyalty to the Tang emperor threatens his plans to take over China. Connecting the two halves is the subplot involving the jealous 4th and 12th Brothers, which Zhu exploits and ultimately leads to the downfall of the Li family.
When I first watched the film, I dismissed it (at least from an action standpoint) as being nothing that one couldn’t find good examples of in your average Italian peplum film made the previous decade. That may still be true, although to be honest, I need to go back and watch the larger-scacled, battle-oriented films like The Giant of Marathon and check. Watching it a second time, especially after watching several wuxia films from the previous decade, made me appreciate it a lot more. And much like John Woo’s two-part epic Red Cliff, the battles focus on the exploits of nigh super-powered generals taking on legions of soldiers, as opposed to dozens of foot soldiers caught up in the chaos.
In King Hu’s landmark films, action director Hang Ying-Chieh was definitely going for “Japanese samurai choreography filtered through the lens of a Peking Opera master.” In the arthouse film A City Called Dragon (1969), it took three choreographers to get the Japanese chambara style of swordplay just right. In this film, Chang Cheh’s action direction team—Tong Gaai and Lau Kar-Leung—keep things fast and simple. An exchange of a hero blocking two or three attackers, and then swinging his weapon and killing one (although sometimes up to five!) opponent. And since the action involves whole armies, it guarantees that there’s little time for strategy and circling: the action scenes are bloody free-for-alls.
As one would expect from a movie revolving around clashing militaries, fights are weapons based, with sabers and spears getting most of the attention, especially the latter, which are David Chiang’s and Ti Lung’s weapons of choice. During the huge and exciting flight from Bianliang castle, Zhu Wen sends a couple of squads of special soldiers—one group is armed with horse-chopping blades, while another uses rope-darts—to kill our heroes. Said escape from Bianliang is the pièce de résistance of the film, as it goes on for almost 20 minutes and has Ti Lung (playing the 11th general, Li Jingsi) killing dozens and dozens of soldiers as he puts his life on the line to get his father out of a burning palace and to safety. In fact, that scene is so exciting that the clímax, where the remaining generals have to root the treachery out of their own family, ends up suffering. At this point, neither Tong Gaai nor Lau Kar-Leung had evolved enough as fight choreographers to give the nine-on-two weapons duel the energy and complexity it needed to stand alongside the sheer scale of the previous set piece. Thus, what should be the emotional and physical peak of the movie is ultimately an anticlímax.
A final observation: I noticed that the military garb worn by the characters is identical to what I’ve seen in films set in both the Song and Ming Dynasties, which came later on. I wonder if Chinese army dress hadn’t changed over the course of several hundred years, or if the costume designers weren’t aware of that, or if simply there was no budget to create authentic attire for Tang Dynasty soldiers, and thus cobbled together whatever was left over from the last Shaw Production set in the Ming Dynasty.
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