Louis Cha Leung-yung/查良鏞 may not be a name that’s familiar to many people outside of the China region but if you’re a fan of the wuxia genre, you definitely know of his literary works. Cha, who passed away in 2018, went by the pen name of Jin Yong/金庸 and his 15 novels have sold over 100 million copies worldwide. As a result of their popularity, there have been multiple adaptations of his works into films, television series, comics and even video games. One of them, “Xiao Ao Jiang Hu” (笑傲江湖/The Smiling, Proud Wanderer), has just received a new movie treatment by Luo Yiwei/羅儀威, who is making his feature film directorial debut.

How to summarize a rambling story like this one into as few words as possible and still be coherent? I’m going to have to borrow heavily from the official press statement. Linghu Chong (Taiwanese actor Tim Huang Xiyan/黃曦彥, CREATION OF THE GODS I: KINGDOM OF STORMS/封神第一部：朝歌風雲) is a carefree, swordsman who is known for his mastery of the Nine Swords of Dugu. He wants nothing more than to withdraw from the turmoil surrounding him and enjoy his wine but outside events prevent him from doing so. During his travels, he rescues a beautiful woman from the clutches of the Demonic Cult, engaging in a fierce battle above a cascading waterfall. He doesn’t realize that this enigmatic woman is none other than Dongfang Bubai (Kitty Zhang Yuqi/張雨綺, UNTOUCHABLE/逆鳞), the newly appointed leader of the Demonic Cult. As fate intertwines their destinies in the chaotic realm of Jianghu, Linghu Chong and Dongfang Bubai forge an unexpected bond. However, an inevitable clash between their respective factions looms on the horizon, plunging them into a battle between good and evil.

Whew! That seems so simple and straightforward but INVINCIBLE SWORDSMAN is anything but. I knew what I was in for when the film began with a verbal preamble meant to drop audiences into the middle of this saga and reduce the film’s running time to a palatable two hours. Unfortunately, the subtitles zipped by so fast across the screen that I missed reading half of them, and what I did read didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The production then went from bad to worse when the action moved to a snowy peak and I had to make out the white subtitles on a white background. It didn’t take long before I gave up reading them altogether and just watched the film, managing to figure out what was going on from my limited Cantonese. (Here in Hong Kong, it’s dubbed into Cantonese. In other markets it’ll be in Mandarin.) And guess what? It didn’t really matter that I didn’t know exactly what was going on. That’s the kind of movie this is. It’s just two hours of swords flying through the air, characters twisting and turning as various objects pass over them in slow motion, some forced maniacal laughter and a lot of drinking of wine. Even the presence of Hong Kong martial arts acting legend Sammo Hung/洪金寶, who plays the sage swordmaster Fengqing Yang, can’t save this film from rising above its mediocrity.

If the story of Linghu Chong sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s been done four times before on film and serialized eight times on TV. Perhaps the most famous of these productions is the 1992 film, SWORDSMAN II, starring Jet Li and Brigitte Lin. INVINCIBLE SWORDSMAN, with its two very lightweight leads, is a dime store version of that. I have to wonder why Tencent (officially it’s Shanghai Tencent Penguin Film Culture Communication Co., Ltd), the film’s big producer, would have chosen an inexperienced director like Luo to take on such an ambitious story, let alone one that has the pedigree that this one has, but I see from the production notes that Luo had won the Qingmeng Young Director Support Program in 2018 with his film entitled HERMIT’S SWORD. The contest was organized by Tencent so perhaps this was the reward. However Luo got the job, he was clearly out of his depth here.

INVINCIBLE SWORDSMAN opens in Hong Kong today (January 23rd). It’s not a disaster. It’s just not interesting. Not that it will matter much. I’m sure it will do well at the box office both here and in China over the lunar new year holiday.

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