OSKFF 2023 Review: Joseph Kuo’s THE SWORDSMAN OF ALL SWORDSMEN (1968)
While I’ve known the name Joseph Kuo, his 1968 wuxia feature, The Swordsman Of All Swordsmen, is a freshman venture for me into classic Taiwanese cinema. It delves into the time-honored revenge tale of a child orphaned at a young age when his parents are murdered by a quartet of killers looking to acquire his father’s sword, all leading up to our protagonist’s key story kicking off twenty years later when he arrives in a village and ultimately acquires his first of four targets who just happened to be harassing a street performer and his daughter at the time.
Accommodating the film’s pristine digital restoration, the cinematography is fantastic from top to bottom, and with a story and pacing steady enough to keep the viewer interested. Tien Ping’s portrayal of Tsai Ying-Jie lends the audience an anti-hero you can root for and empathize with, and who emotes really well on the screen along with his co-stars, including Polly Shang-Kuan who plays Flying Swallow, a beautiful swordswoman who takes a liking to Tien, and even starts to fall for him. The interesting part comes upon realizing the truth of Swallow’s proximity toward him, well past her moralizing and spirited efforts to talk Tsai out of pursuing the path he’s currently on. Chiang Nan’s Black Dragon delivers a noteworthy supporting performance with a character that brings its own fair share of charisma to the screen, even with half of his face visible for most of the film’s duration.
The kills are brutal and violent, and the action, while shy of the more formidable and distinctive shapes and style of action typically seen in Golden Harvest and Shaw productions, it’s all performed neatly and carefully choreographed, with some shots and sequences visibly sped up to deliver the desired effect, and you can clearly see the work the actors all put in to make their characters look convincing for the most part. It’s also neat seeing how Kuo directed action scenes for audiences as it only expands our purview of action film viewing and consumption. Kuo’s work here is invariably part of the rich history of Wuxia cinema from a Taiwanese lens.
The Swordsman Of All Swordsmen screens for the 10th Old School Kung Fu Film Festival from April 21 to April 30.
Native New Yorker. Lover of all things pizza, chocolate, pets, and good friends. Karaoke hero. Left of center. Survivor. Fond supporter of cult, obscure and independent cinema - especially fond of Asian movies and global action cinema. Author of the bi-weekly Hit List. Founder and editor of Film Combat Syndicate. Still, very much, only human.
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