Reign of Assassins (2010)

Reign of Assassins (2010)
Aka: Rain of Swords; The Swordsman’s World
Chinese Title: 劍雨
Translation: Sword Rain

 

Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Jung Woo-Sung, Wang Xue-Qi, Barbie Hsu Hsi-Yuan, Shawn Yu Man-Lok, Kelly Lin Hsi-Lei, Guo Xiaodong, Jiang Yi-Yan, Leon Dai Li-Jen
Director: Su Chao-Pin, John Woo
Action Director: Stephen Tung Wai

 

Most of us were excited when this film was announced. Part of it had to do with the fact that John Woo was producing and co-directing. As he was still riding a high from the warm reception to his Red Cliff films, another period piece wuxia film felt like a good idea. However, we were more excited at the prospect of Michelle Yeoh headlining her first wuxia pian since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and her first full-on martial arts role since 2004’s Silver Hawk. We fans were fine with her doing dramas and getting paychecks for limited roles in Hollywood blockbusters, but we wanted her to get to basics and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any.

The movie is set in the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368 – 1644), in the capital city of Nanjing. An official (Lee Hing-Cheung, of Generation Pendragon) and his household are slaughtered by a mysterious gang of assassins known as the Dark Stone. The reason? Apparently, the official was in possession of the corpse—well, half of it—of the Indian monk Bodhidharma, aka Tamo, aka the guy who invented Shaolin kung fu. Legend states that whoever is in possession of the full corpse can be cured of any ailment, no matter how grave. One of the assassins, Drizzle (Kelly Lin, of Martial Angels and The Legend of Zu), takes the corpse and disappears with it.

During her flight, she has two fateful encounters. The first is with the official’s son, Zhang Renfang (Guo Xiaodong, of True Legend and An Empress and the Warriors). He survived the massacre and is particularly angry with Drizzle for delivering the killing blow to his father. But he’s in no shape to fight and Drizzle dispatches him with a blow to the heart with her super-flexible sword. The second encounter is with a monk named Wisdom (Lee Zong-Han, of The Lost Bladesman), who apparently had been Drizzle’s lover before deciding to take his vows. He engages in a duel with her and purposely loses, but not before giving her a few swordplay pointers and admonishing her to leave the Martial World and live an honest, nonviolent life.

Drizzle takes his advice to heart and visits Dr. Li (Chin Shih-Chieh, The Great Emperor’s Concubine and The Flying Tigers and the Kung Fu Kids), who subjects her to the 15^th century equivalent to plastic surgery, only with ravenous insects. Drizzle gets a new face and adopts the name Zeng Jing and is now played by Michelle Yeoh. She gets a job in Nanjing selling fabric and living a quiet existence. Her neighbor, Auntie Cai (Pau Hei-Ching, of White Hair Devil Lady), tries to play matchmaker with her, much to her annoyance. However, she can’t help but notice the bumbling, but good-natured charm of the local courier, Jiang Ah-Sheng (Jung Woo-Sung, of Musa the Warrior).

Zeng Jing eventually decides that her karma is good enough for her to settle down. She and Jiang get married and set up a peaceful existence at her house, living an ordinary life and having ordinary problems: health problems that cause them to go over-budget, shoes with holes in them, etc. However, a visit to the local bank changes all of that. Rumors have been swirling around the Martial World that the other half of Bodhidharma’s corpse is being kept in the bank vault. A gang of assassins stages a robbery at the same time Jiang and Zeng are there. The assassins paralyze everybody present with pressure point strikes, although Zeng is crafty enough to deflect the one directed at her. When would-be robbers start killing all the witnesses, Zeng springs into action and defeats them with her dormant martial arts skills. However, in doing so, she inadvertently reveals her existence to her former colleagues of the Dark Stone. And now that they know that Drizzle is both alive and living in the capital, the Dark Stone will surely track her down and get back what is theirs. Zeng Jing’s idyllic existence is thrust into chaos as secrets on all sides start coming to light…

David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) inspired a lot of filmmakers around 2010. The idea of your regular Joe Nobody standing up to some local riff-raff, only to reveal that he was once Somebody, shows up in a number of films. That was part of the premise of the Japanese martial arts flick KG: Karate Girl. It was also an important part of the plot of Donnie Yen’s Wu Xia, which was A History of Violence by way of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. It also serves as the turning point of the story in this film, which has been a little light on the martial arts up to this point. Things ramp up once Zeng Jing’s cover is blown and she finds herself compelled to take up the sword in order to protect her husband from her former employer.

Obviously, this film is a lot different from A History of Violence. Although it uses the same plot mechanic as that movie did, here it is an impetus to a story that involves the (supposedly) magical, mummified remains of an Indian kung fu monk and the conniving parties that will invent any lie and betray any colleague just to lay claim to it. We know that Zeng Jing has kept it as a sort of bargaining chip should she be discovered, but everybody else associated with the corpse becomes corrupted by the promise of the power it purports to give to the owner.

In that way, the cadaver of Tamo himself is much like the Sacred Scroll of the Swordsman trilogy, itself based on Jin Yong’s novel Xiao Ao Jiang Hu (translated as “The Laughing Swordsman” or “Laughing and Proud in the Martial World”). The thing is, if you know what happens in that story, especially Jet Li’s Swordsman II, then it becomes doubly interesting when the movie reveals the designs that the Dark Stone’s leader, the enigmatic Wheel King (Wang Xue-Qi, of Warriors of Heaven and Earth and Bodyguards and Assassins). Not only is it the exact opposite of what Brigitte Lin’s Asia the Invincible did to himself/herself in that film, it’s a complete subversion of all those powerful villains that populated 1990s wuxia films, like Dragon Inn and Swordsman.

Kudos to Taiwanese writer-director Su Chao-Pin for being able to do something that is both similar and different from the films of two decades earlier. Su Chao-Pin is best known for his unconventional horror films Silk (which he wrote and directed) and Double Vision (which he just wrote). Those were very interesting movies, but both suffered from giving the audience convoluted explanations for their respective supernatural goings-on, only for the characters to wave them away at the last moment in favor of a “Love is a powerful force” theme. The Power of LoveÔ does up at the end, but ultimately as an explanation for the characters’ final decisions as opposed to 90 minutes of Spooky Stuff, so it works.

Su Chao-Pin and John Woo’s assured direction for the former’s script is bolstered by a strong cast of (generally) well thought-out characters. Both Michelle Yeoh and Jung Woo-Sung make for likable leads, especially once things start getting ugly. My favorite moment of the latter is when he returns to find a naked seductress in his bed, played by Connected’s Barbie Hsu. Hsu almost walks away with the movie as Drizzle’s replacement: a sexually-insatiable but completely amoral killer. Shawn Yue (Dragon Tiger Gate and The Invisible Target) also does a great job as the needle-throwing killer Lei Bin, whose alter-ego is that of a loving family man. His final scene is one of the more touching moments of the film.

The fight scenes are staged by veteran action director Stephen Tung Wai. Tung Wai had previously worked with Su Chao-Pin on Silk and is best known for helping John Woo invent the Bullet Ballet sub-genre with A Better Tomorrow. However, when it comes to martial arts and swordplay, as slick as Tung’s choreography can be, one shouldn’t come into the film expecting any all-time classic fights. I mean, it’s one thing when he’s working alongside other choreographers like Yuen Bun (The Blade) or Ching Siu-Tung (Hero). But when he’s the head action director, expect some good solid fights but nothing more. There are lots of fun swordfights to be seen, although some of them are edited too much for their own good. There’s certainly nothing her that equals Michelle Yeoh’s fights with Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Jet Li vs. Donnie Yen in Hero.

In the end, Reign of Assassins succeeds because it’s such a well-rounded film. From the story to the acting and casting to the action, it does everything right, even if it doesn’t necessarily surpass the best examples of the genre in any given department. And given the state of wuxia films coming out of China today, sometimes that’s just more than enough.

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