Butterfly and Sword (1993)

Butterfly and Sword (1993)
Aka: Comet, Butterfly and Sword
Chinese Title: 新流星蝴蝶劍
Translation: New Meteor, Butterfly, Sword

 

Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Michelle Yeoh, Joey Wong Cho-Yin, Jimmy Lin Zhi-Ying, Donnie Yen Ji-Dan, Tuo Tsung-Hua, Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, Elsie Yeh Chuan-Chen, Lee Ka-Ting, Chang Kuo-Chu
Director: Michael Mak
Action Director: Tony Ching Siu-Tung, Ma Yuk-Sing, Cheung Yiu-Sing

As I’ve stated before, the general rule of making wuxia movies in the 1990s is that they had to be 1) based on the works of Gu Long or Louis Cha/Jin Yong (or some other famous tale or legend) and/or 2) previously adapted to film by the Shaw Brothers. In the case of Butterfly and Sword, both criteria apply. The source material is a novel by Gu Long called Comet, Butterfly and Sword (the Chinese term 流星 – Piyin: “Liúxīng”—can be translated as “comet”, “meteor” or “shooting star,” depending on the context). It had been adapted to film by the Shaw Brothers in 1976 as Killer Clans, which was the film that kicked off director Chor Yuen’s cycle of super-complicated wuxia films based on Gu Long’s novels, often starring Ti Lung.

I have yet to see Killer Clans, nor have I read the original novel, so I’m not sure how this film compares to either. I do know that it typical 90s wuxia manner, it tries to compress about 800 pages of source material into an eighty-minute narrative. That makes the movie a bit confusing to the uninitiated, especially given the breathless pace of Ching Siu-Tung’s action direction. Teenage Blake had to rent it three or four times from Blockbuster Video in the late 90s to understand the story—something similar happened to me with Kung Fu Cult Master, too.

Set in the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644), the film opens with a high official who’s writing a letter to one of the clans. We’re not quite sure who he is, who he’s writing to, or why his letter is important, but someone does. An unknown assailant flies into his inner sanctum and slices off his face with a sword.

Cut to another location, where Sing (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, of Hard Boiled and Tokyo Raiders) is lying about in the trees waiting for someone. Sing is a super-powered kung fu assassin working for the Happy Forest Clan, led by Sister Ko (Michelle Yeoh). Sing’s quarry is a man named Lui Chung-Yuen (Kickboxer's Lee Ka-Ting), who has ties to a high-ranking official named Lee Siu-Tin. Sing defeats Lui’s men by firing himself from a bow and using the momentum to slice everyone in half. He captures Lui, who is later executed by Sister Ko after trying to escape and attack her.

We learn in the meantime that Sing is currently engaged to a beautiful young woman named Butterfly (Joey Wong, of City Hunter and A Chinese Ghost Story III). Butterfly grew up in the Martial World—hence her ability to perform all sorts of wire-assisted acrobatics—but left it because she was tired of watching her father kill people. Sing hasn’t told her what his real profession is—she thinks he’s an ordinary merchant—but plans on leaving the Happy Forest after his next mission.

Said mission was given to Sister Ko by her employer, an elderly Eunuch named Tsao (played by Wong Chung-Kui, of Flying Dagger and Wonder Seven). Tsao has informed Sister Ko that the aforementioned Lee Siu-Tin may be planning a rebellion against the Emperor, with the help of another clan, led by Suen Yuk-Pa (Tsui Kam Kong, of Girls Unbuttoned and Prison on Fire 2). Lee Siu-Tin has sent a letter to Lord Suen of his intentions. If Sister Ko can retrieve the letter as evidence, then the Eunuch will be able to arrest Lee Siu-Tin and put an end to his political machinations.

To this end, Sister Ko stages a fight in public between her, Sing and her right-hand-man, the drunken swordsman Yip Cheung (Donnie Yen, of Sha Po Lang and Dragon Tiger Gate). Ko and Yip “kill” Sing, which allows him to assume a new identity, not unlike James Bond in You Only Live Twice. Sing plays the role of a wandering swordsman and ingratiates himself to Lord Suen  Yuk-Pa by defending him from some random assassin at a public festival. Suen Yuk-Pa invites Sing to join his clan, which Sing accepts. There are few kinks in the plan: like how Lord Suen’s lover (Elsie Yeh, of White Lotus Cult and Sam the Iron Bridge) looks an awful lot like Ho Ching, Sing’s childhood friend who, like Sing, had been taken in by Sister Ko. Also, both Lee Siu-Tin and Eunuch Tsao may know a lot more than either of them are letting on…

Of course, this is only an outline of the main conflict. There’s also a love cube between our main characters. Although Sing and Butterfly are clearly in love, Sister Ko has pined for Sing for years, and all of the riches of her clan (not to mention her Michelle Yeoh beauty) isn’t enough to sway him to her bedside. Sister Ko also has an admirer in the form of Yip Cheung, whose love she regularly spurns, even though the two complement each other perfectly when it comes to kung fu killing. That leads to a funny scene where a drunken Yip tries to make out with a charcoal drawing of Michelle Yeoh, which is both goofy and just pathetic. The movie jumps back and forth between the characters’ personal lives and the mission at hand, which is why some viewers find the story both underdeveloped and full of filler. I personally found it all enduring and really felt for the characters.

Director Michael Mak is best known for another Ming Dynasty-set film, the infamous Sex and Zen. That said, I think his role here was similar to Gordon Chan’s role in Fist of Legend: just get the characters to the next piece. While FOL was largely Yuen Woo-Ping’s movie, this is definitely a showcase for the talents of Tony Ching Siu-Tung, who ruled the wuxia genre with an iron grip during the first half of the 1990s. The film is filled the brim with flowing silks, flying people, wire-assisted flips and twists, qi blasts, and all sorts of over-the-top madness. Most characters can’t even walk a few steps without breaking out into some super-powered, acrobatic, push-off-the-wall leap. And Ching Siu-Tung treats it all as a thing of beauty, an aesthetic that Tsui Hark was obviously trying to deconstruct in The Blade (1995).

There are a number of action sequences, all of them filmed in that over-the-top, quick-cut style that Ching Siu-Tung had been trying to perfect ever since The Swordsman (1990). Each of them has its own type of creativity, like Tony Leung firing himself out of a bow and reducing an entire squadron of fighters to mulch. Or an early attempt on Suen Yuk-Pa’s life features a bunch of assassins flying into his estate armed with blades that are spinning around like helicopter rotors. That ends with heads getting lopped off and limbless torsos being kicked against trees.

The first showstopper is a massacre set in a bamboo forest. Sister Ko and Yip Cheung show up to kill a bunch of fighters who are to be hired into Suen Yuk-Pa’s clan. Donnie Yen shows off a few of his trademark kicks—his patented jumping back kick and jumping double back kick—but that’s just small potatoes compared to the rest of the scene. This is the sort of sequence where Michelle Yeoh will slice a bamboo tree in half, slide down the middle while performing the splits, and then allow each half to skewer a wire-bound stuntman. Or Donnie Yen holding out his sword, slicing another sword in half, and causing the two halves to fly back into the owner’s chest. It’s wire-fu madness cranked up to eleven, ending with the dark image of dozens of people impaled on bamboo.

Then you get to the last ten minutes, and things really go into overdrive. I won’t spoil the story context of the final fights, but suffice to say that all of it is just pure insanity. Michelle Yeoh fights with a silk scarf that can function as a lash or a staff, like Donnie Yen in Once Upon a Time in China 2. Donnie Yen has an ultra-fast exchange of swordplay with another fighter that ends with a multiple blood geysers. The human bow-and-arrow idea gets revisited in a way that you won’t expect. Candle flames are used as bullets. Property damage is in the millions! Headless corpses decide that they don’t want to stay dead and continue fighting! It’s all pure lunacy, spoiled only by a few moments of unnecessary undercranking.

I think that once I came to terms with Tony Ching Siu-Tung’s brand of action direction—you rarely watch any of his movies to see a true showcase for the actors’ martial talents—this quickly became one of my favorite wuxia films of them all. It’s just so nutty and the characters are so endearing (and the women beautiful) that I can’t help but just enjoy the ride. And to top things off, the movie ends with a recapitulation of the all the action scenes, set to the song “Love is Like a Shooting Star,” sung by Michelle Yeoh herself! It’s just heaven for a Michelle fan like myself!

This review is part of Fighting Female February 2023: The Month of Michelle. Click the banner below for more reviews