The Invincible (1972)

The Invincible (1972)
Chinese Title: 縱橫天下
Translation: Vertically and Horizontally (Across) the World

 

Starring: Jimmy Wang Yu, Paul Chang Chung, Helen Ma Hoi-Lun, Ma Chi, Tsao Chien, Hsueh Han, Guan Yi, Yuan Shen
Director: Lo Chen
Action Director: Hsieh Hsing

 

Although the lone review of The Invincible at the HKMDB gives this a five out of ten, I thought this was actually one of the better Jimmy Wang Yu films that I have seen…ever. And that includes those movies for which he is best known: The One-Armed Swordsman; The One-Armed Boxer; and Master of the Flying Guillotine. Like the similarly titled The Invincible Sword (also starring Wang Yu), this is a rollicking adventure set during the Southern Song period when the Han Chinese were at war with the Jurchen-led Jin Dynasty.

The film is set during the reign of the Jin emperor Wanyan Liang (A.D. 1149–1161), played here by Paul Chang Chung (The Invincible Eight and Fantasy Mission Force). As in real life, Liang has the ambition to unite China—now divided into the Southern Song, Jin and Western Xia kingdoms—into a single empire under his rule. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

For now, let’s focus on some other characters. More specifically Wanyan Liang’s sister, Wanyan Changqing (Deaf Mute Heroine’s Helen Ma). When we meet her, she is being chased by a bunch of Song soldiers, who eventually engage in combat with her. Enter Li Mu-Bai (Jimmy Wang Yu, whose character bears the same name as Chow Yun-Fat’s character from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), a Song swordsman extraordinaire who sees a woman in distress and fights off the soldiers. Changqing is taken with the man’s chivalry, and the two part ways. Li Mu-Bai is on his way to his hometown, Jiangnan, which is not far away from where the Jin armies are gathering to invade Song territory. On his way, he comes across a village that has been completely destroyed by the Jin, at which point he vows he will utterly destroy their nation.

Once in Jiangnan, he meets up with the great Marshal Yu (Yuen Shen, of The Evil Karate and The Shaolin Kids), who is presumably the real-life personage Yu Yunwen, through a friend (Ma Chi, of The Beautiful Swordwoman and The Bravest Revenge). This is where Li Mu-Bai learns that he had unwittingly helped and protected a Jin princess from his own team. An embarrassed Li Mu-Bai tries to take his own life, but is convinced by the officials to lead some men against Emperor Wanyan Liang. Li Mu-Bai, driven by remorse for his mistakes and anger against the Jins in general, decides to go on a suicide mission to assassinate the emperor himself.

Li Mu-Bai sneaks into Jin territory and attacks the emperor whilst the latter is hunting, but is ultimately injured by archers and overpowered by Wanyan Changqing in personal combat. Instead of killing him on the spot, the emperor takes him captive. During interrogation, Princess Changqing, who is visibly smitten with Li Mu-Bai, fakes blinding him and has him taken to the dungeon. There, she frees him and hides him in her quarters until her brother leaves for the battlefront. She then takes him to the border and lets him return to his land in peace. But the Emperor Wanyan is not finished with Li Mu-Bai yet…

According to history, the real Jin emperor Wanyan Liang was a bit of an S.O.B. and did a lot to earn the ire of his subordinates, both noblemen and soldiers alike. He ran two failed campaigns to cross the Yangtze River and was eventually murdered by his own soldiers. In The Invincible he is even more loathsome, casually raping his subordinates’ wives and killing servant girls after stripping them naked (yes, there are boobies in this, although the camera never lingers on them). This eventually comes back to bite him in the ass at the very end, and we the viewer are quite happy to see him die.

Jimmy Wang Yu’s Li Mu-Bai is similar in character and ability to the swordsman he plays in The Invincible Sword. And I’ll be honest, I think this is one of his best physical performances, period. We all know that Wang Yu looks better with a sword than he does with his hands, but he’s actually quite good with everything here. He has a hand-to-hand battle with Mao Shan early on and his handwork is far crisper and more exact than it is in his basher films. A later fight has him taking on some Song officials armed with poles, which he also wields with the same efficiency he afforded his swordplay. Speaking of which, under Hsieh Hsing’s action direction (he would later choreography JWY in The Killer Meteors), he looks as good with a sword here as he did in his best Shaw movies, if not better. After watching a whole slew of these early 70s martial arts films, I can say that Jimmy Wang Yu actually surpassed the likes of contemporaries like Shih Chun, David Tang, Chiang Nan, Wai Wang, and others.

Complementing Wang Yu quite nicely is Helen Ma as the Jin Princess Wanyan Changqing. Helen Ma is a stronger actress than the likes of Chang Ching-Ching and Lisa Chiao-Chiao, frequent co-stars of Wang Yu. She is also more convincing as a swordswoman than Hsu Feng, at least reaching the level of badassery as contemporary Cheng Pei Pei. Her character here has to move back and forth between romantic, action bad ass, and woman of culture and Helen Ma does it quite effortlessly. Her character is actually supposed to be the strongest fighter of the entire film, which she does fairly well, considering the cast of Taiwanese wuxia/basher regulars. And between hers and Wang Yu’s performances, the interesting historical backdrop of the story and the strong action throughout, I consider The Invincible to be a minor gem.