By Dan Skip Allen 

“Blades of the Guardians” is a Chinese martial arts period piece set in the desert landscape where there are Five Clans that rule the land. It’s based on a Biao Ren comic book series directed by Yuen-Woo-ping. This is a Wuxia film, Wuxia, which translates to “martial arts and chivalry” or “martial arts heroes.” It is a genre of Chinese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese cinema featuring fantastical, high-flying martial arts in historical settings, often incorporating supernatural abilities. These kinds of movies are exciting and tend to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

A horseman, Doa’ma (Wu Jing), is riding through a desert landscape trying to get to a town where he needs to meet a man. What he gets when he gets there is a town full of people afraid of the man in charge. This man that came into their town will hopefully save them. The only thing is that he is met with some opposition. This leads to no holds barred action throwdown between the horsemen and a bunch of armed men with swords. This leads to an epic fight sequence involving all kinds of objects like chairs and railings, doors, and so forth. This was an exciting way to start the story, but this is just the beginning of this action escapade of an adventure.

After riding across a desert to another town, he eventually runs afoul of a woman, Ayuya (Chen Lijun) and her female archers, who saves him from a horde of warriors on horses. He gets safely to a different town where he seeks the guidance and advice from the town elder Chang Guiren (Jett Li). He assured him things would be fine, but he needed him to take on another mission. An escort mission to take Lord Zhi Shilang (Wu Jing) across the desert to another town where he can lead and unite the Flower Rebellion. He is also the most wanted criminal in the land. It all depends on who you talk to. They are joined by the little boy and Ayuya on the journey. The journey leads them to meet other people and get involved in some dangerous encounters. 

The story deals with a land of Clans, Five specifically, who fight off the land, and their leaders want to rule everything. Each of the Clans has a reason for wanting to stop the leader of the Flower Rebellion from uniting a bunch of downtrodden citizens. They need these people to be subservient and pay taxes to their rich overlords in the big houses. There are complications and funding going on between the Five Clans though which causes problems for everybody involved in this martial arts film. Some of it is a bit confusing but, nonetheless, is exciting to follow along with anyway. Fans of these types of movies are going to be fascinated by the story anyway.

These types of movies use a lot of wire work similar to House of the Flying Dragon, Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon that perfected this style of filmmaking. There were multiple fight/action scenes that kept me entertained throughout this film. These guys and gals knew how to use swords, bow and arrows, and other things that are used in period piece movies like this one is. The costumes and other things help give the viewers the feel the film is going for. The heroes and the villains of the story portray their roles excellently. They aren’t always extinguishable from one another, but I liked most of them. 

Director Yuen Woo-ping brought a lot of the flair that he used to make a bunch of his other martial arts movies in the past, like Drunken Master, True Legend, and IronMonkey.. He infused his movies with humor and a sense of larger than life characters. The world he set up here was in a desert wasteland and even had a giant sandstorm for good measure. All the horseback riding also led to some interesting action sequences. He is a master of his craft. Working in a desert landscape couldn’t have been easy, though. Especially with all the heavy armor and costumes the cast had to wear for their characters. He made this production look easy from my perspective. It also looked gorgeous from a cinematography standpoint. The landscapes were captured to perfection in this film. I was in awe of how beautiful it was.

“Blades of the Guardians” was a fun action adventure period piece.  It had cool characters, an interesting story, and a lot, I mean a lot, of action fight scenes. The director used his signature wire work to get the vibe he was going for in this adaptation of the comic book. The cast was pretty great across the board in this movie.The humor and dramatic moments alike were all brought to the screen in a similar way to his films in the past. I was completely immersed in this story from the very beginning. Fans of these types of films will surely enjoy this one, but it’s not exactly as good as a few of the others that came before. It’s still pretty good, though.

3 ½ stars