THE BUTCHER’S BLADE Review: Liu Wenpu’s Sharply Entertaining Wuxia Thriller
The Butcher’s Blade arrives on Digital from May 12, and on Blu-ray and DVD exclusively through Amazon on July 7.
Liu Wenpu’s directing career is pretty young, but he’s garnered experience plentily enough to know his way around the craft on a film set, and with The Butcher’s Blade, it shows. The period actioner is set in Pingyang where a lowly constable must contend with his own timidity as corruption and deception set the stage for a brutal awakening, and a chance at redemption.
Enter Xue Buyi (Liu Fengchao), a swordsman not exactly living out his fullest potential as a warrior, or even a lawman. The film’s opening moments make that clear, as Xue vies for a better paying gig to help earn more and ultimately lands a job guarding the treasury. Little does he know that he’s about to be framed for a major heist that’s about to happen, sparking a bittersweet reunion with his former master, Huang (Chunyu Shanshan), now serving as a senior official, who clears his name and graces him a chance to find the main culprits.
This plot point is an apt introduction into a story that’s more layered than it lets on, which is pretty easy to figure out if you’re clocking the film during its ninety-minute duration and realizing that more needs to happen, and matter of factually, things do. That’s when the stakes are truly set, but not before our protagonist finally learns to steel himself more when confronting and questioning suspects, recounting his training and applying the appropriate methods to uncover the truth.
Interestingly, this aspect of his development doesn’t set a tone of any kind for any threat against Xue Buyi’s humanity, and really just occurs as something obligatory to observe as we follow his character. He also shares something of an interest in the local noodle girl named Yin, played by Gao Weiman, who herself gets weary of his line of work and mainly keeps her direct concerns to herself, instead reassuring him with her cooking. It’s an ample aside to this particular arc to help compensate for some of the small romantic nuances they share beneath the surface; One aspect of their connection also stems from Xue having to confront Yin’s landlord, Wei, for his unwanted advances. Oddly enough the script finds a way for Wei to be a tad more ancillary to the plot.
The film’s requisite action sequences directed by Du Xiaohui do the trick. He’s done plenty of films in the past decade including Gordon Chan’s God Of War under Qin Pengfei’s stewardship, as well as most of current Fight Against Evil trilogy starring Xie Miao, and as fun as the action was in The Butcher’s Blade, I’m confident that Du is going to prosper greatly going forward.
The film meanders a little with a credit roll that plays back moments from the film leading up to a mid-credits scene. Your guess is as good as mine if it hints at a sequel of some kind but take it with a grain of salt. For now, I can assert that with as many spoilers as I’ve attempted to avoid in this analysis, The Butcher’s Blade cuts deep enough that you may want more.
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