Bruce Tuan’s 7 Promises (1980)

Bruce Tuan’s 7 Promises (1980)
Aka: Seven Promises; Bruce Tuan 7 Promise; Born of Fighter
Chinese Title: 七巧鳳凰碧玉刀
Translation: Seven Skillful Phoenix Jasper Knife

 

Starring: Mang Fei, Yueh Hua, Alan Liu Te-Kai, Hsia Ling-Ling, Tin Ping-Chun, Chan Sing, Chin Po, Li Hsiang, Yuan Shen, Ku Cheng, Yi Yuan
Director: Liu Sung-Pai
Action Director: Hsiao Huang-Lung

 

So when is a Brucesploitation film not a Brucesploitation film? When it’s Bruce Tuan’s 7 Promises, a Gu Long wuxia pian that the local filmmakers inexplicably decided would have Bruce in the title. I mean, this is set in the Ming (or Song) dynasty, so the probability of running into a fellow named “Bruce” was rather slim. And as far as I could tell, there was nobody whose surname was “Tuan,” either. In fact, there are technically no “promises” either. I guess “Lord Yu’s Seven Counsels” sounds  a bit too philosophical for the wuxia crowd, so “Bruce Tuan’s 7 Promises” it was!

The movie starts by introducing us to the Jade Sword, a powerful weapon that is capable of slashing people without actually touching them. Sort of like how video games have swords firing crescent-shaped energy blasts, but here said blasts would be invincible. The sword is currently in the possession of the righteous Lord Yu (Yi Yuan, of Duel of Karate and Furious Slaughter). Lord Yu is sorta a mediator in the Martial World, justly keeping all the clans and organizations in order.

Lord Yu’s son (Meng Fei, of The Prodigal Boxer and The Unbeaten 28) has now come of age and is about to participate in an arranged marriage with the daughter of a nobleman in a distant village. For the record, he is also called Lord Yu in the film, so I’ll just call him Yu in this review. Instead of bestowing the Jade Sword to Yu, dad has his son take the sword to his future father-in-law as an engagement gift. Before Yu sets out, his father gives him seven hints to living and long and healthy life in the martial world:

 

1.      Never look for trouble; keep to yourself;

2.      Don’t strike up friendships with complete strangers;

3.      Never gamble with strangers;

4.      Always be courteous to a monk;

5.      Never display your purse;

6.      Don’t believe all you hear;

7.      Avoid the women that will be your weakness.

Yu then sets off into the world to meet his betrothed and start life anew. He stops at a restaurant on the way—standard kung fu movie behavior. There he meets a beautiful girl, Hua Yulai (Chin Po of The Silver Spear and The Professional Killer), and another woman pretending to be a man. A couple of long-haired monks show up at the restaurant and try to carry off Hua. Yu steps in and beats them up. A grateful Hua invites Yu over to her estate for some tea. And what about dad’s advice, Yu?

Hua Yulai gets Yu drunk and comes close to bedding him, although he feigns passing out before they can get down and dirty. When she herself gives up and goes to bed, Yu gets up and sneaks out of the house. He later realizes that the sword is no longer with him, but when he goes back to retrieve his weapon, both it and Miss Hua have disappeared. While wandering through the forest, he meets a drunk fisherman named Chow San (Yueh Hua, of Come Drink with Me and Green Dragon Inn). Chow San fancies himself a busybody of the region and directs Yu to the local Buddhist temple to talk to a Priest Ku. On his way to the temple, Yu is set upon by a trio of killers decked in white and red demanding the Jade Sword. He is saved by the woman in man’s clothing (now in woman’s clothing), who identifies herself as Chow Cho-Fei ((Secret of Chinese Kung Fu’s Hsia Ling-Ling, playing the sort of role that might have been reserved for Doris Lung). She agrees to accompany him on his journey.

At the temple, a couple monks inform Yu that they have never heard of Priest Ku. However, a visit to a local restaurant reveals that the owner is a former Buddhist nun. She informs him that the man, Ku, is gambling with some buddies in a hidden room beneath the restaurant. Yu meets Ku (Tin Ping-Chu, of Legend of Chu Liu Hsiang), who is gambling with a explosives expert Wang Fei (Eighteen Fatal Strikes’ Hak Lung) and Lu Shao-Yun (Ku Cheng, of Dressed to Fight and 13 Golden Nuns). Once again, Yu breaks his father’s rules and engages in some gambling with these men, winning thousands of taels of gold without even realizing it. However, since he had come to the table with no money at all, he refuses his earnings, which wins him the men’s respect.

They tell him that the four monks he fought in the restaurant belong to Abbot Tee Shu (Chan Sing, of The Himalayan and Black Panther), a former Shaolin monk who struck out on his own and formed his own sect. The three men take Yu to see the Abbot, but their visit is interrupted by the arrival of a dead body. The corpse is Lu Shao-Yun’s son, and the Jade Sword is embedded in his body. Naturally, the men suspect of Yu of foul play and the Abbot tries to kill him. With the help of Chow Cho-Fei, who has been following Yu in secret, Yu escapes.

At this point, I think a reel of film is missing, because Yu and Chow end up in an abandoned house miles away with a large trunk in their possession. Inside the trunk is the body of a man who is slowly dying of poisoning (Alan Liu Te-Kai). Yu cures him. At this point, things start getting convoluted. Abbot Tee Shu puts a bounty of Yu’s head for the murder of Lu Shao-Yun’s son, but eventually is murdered himself…by the Jade Sword. Who is the behind the murder? Is it Miss Hua? Is it Lord Yu? Does it have anything to do with the mysterious Green Dragon Gang that people talk about in hushed tones? If so, who leads said gang?

Bruce Tuan’s 7 Promises was based on a story by famed wuxia author Gu Long, who also wrote the screenplay. It certainly has the feel of a late 70s Shaw Brothers film by Chu Yuan, who generally adapted Gu Long’s material into film at the time. It is lacking in a budget, although I’m sure that if someone did a digital restoration, complete with widescreen and subtitles, it would look almost as good as its Shaw Brothers counterparts. I also think that subtitles would help viewers make sense of the story, as the dubbing might cause some viewers to get lose in the myriad of characters.

The story is pretty typical wuxia, a righteous (and in this case, slightly naïve) martial artist gets involved with corruption in the Martial World. The general gist of Young Lord Yu’s character is that he often finds himself in situations where he has to choose between his father’s advice and the needs of the moment, and is flexible enough to do the right thing while honest enough to not allow himself to get dragged into the evil around him. This ends up serving him well as his adventure continues, all the way up to the end, when we get an actual happy ending to one of these things, complete with requited love!

As expected, the film suffers from having too many characters to keep track of, many of whom have the same ancient Chinese hairstyles. Well, this film is not quite so bad in that respect, but there are a lot of characters, several of whom show up for a couple of scenes only to disappear without ever giving us an explanation as to why we needed to care about them. The striking example is Wang Fei, who introduces himself as a famous explosives expert. But other than throwing leaves like shuriken, he doesn’t blow up anything and dies before he can do anything important. Chan Sing’s role as the worldly abbot also feels truncated, as if he was supposed to be more important than he ended up being to the finished film.

The action here was choreographed by Hsiao Huang-Long, who has graced these pages in films like Shaolin Deadly Kicks and Eunuch of the Western Palace. Hsiao was a competent, if unremarkable, action director and this movie is nothing different. The action serves its purpose, although most viewers will probably forget the fights a few minutes after finishing it. The climax is also a letdown in terms of fighting: it promises more than it actually delivers. Hsiao Huang-Long’s best film is still Shaolin Deadly Kicks, as far as I’m concerned.

Meng Fei mainly fights on the defensive in this movie, so the fights are generally him acrobatically dodging enemies as they attack him with diverse weapons, like swords, sabers, poles, and even grappling hooks. The best of these is aforementioned trio of sword-wielding assassins, who attack in tandem with synchronized routines. That fight is reminiscent of Jackie’s classic moments in films like Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin and The Fearless Hyena. It even ends on a blackly funny note, with them adopting what is a essentially a suicide formation. The acrobatic-defensive routine does start to grow old as the film progresses, even if it is consistent with Meng Fei’s character.

7 Promises does okay with its convoluted story and average action. The best part about the movie is Meng Fei’s interaction with his female counterpart, Chow Cho-Fei. At one point, we learn that she’s apparently an undercover detective for the court. But that’s not all we learn about her. But she makes a great cynical (but caring) foil to Lord Yu’s naïve, but kind do-gooder. And it comes to a head at the end. Unlike so many kung fu movies, that more or less stop after the climatic fight, this one actually wraps up the story with another scene afterward.

But there is one thing…who the hell was Bruce Tuan, guys?