DVD Dao jiàn xiào

The first few minutes of THE BUTCHER, THE CHEF AND THE SWORDSMAN gave me pause: the hip-hop-rock scoring, the one- and two-second cutting rhythms, the alternating between color, black & white, and artificially colored black and white, the use of kooky on-screen graphics. Everything just screamed that this would be a 90 minute assault on the senses from a director who probably had a lot of experience with music videos. And that's basically what it is, but where Hong Kong director Andrew Lau tried this fast-cutting bullshiht with THE RETURN OF CHEN ZHEN, more or less ruining a story and trivializing characters that didn't deserve it, Wuershan's THE BUTCHER, THE CHEF AND THE SWORDSMAN is a gonzo story stocked to capacity with a grimy grotesquerie of characters that all but demand an addled directorial style to give them life.

Expanded from a fiction piece from a magazine (according to the director), the movie is a story within a story within another story in which three cursed owners of a near-mythical blade (forged from a ball of iron originally melted down from the weapons of many powerful swordsman) relate in flashback the stories of the how they came to possess the knife. Reaching the third tale, the film then boomerangs back through the climaxes of each story to bring us back to the present. Sounds a bit like INCEPTION, right? Only with flashbacks instead of dreams. The two films were shot independently of one another, making the similarity in structure a pure coincidence.

Everything but the kitchen sink is in here: a brothel madam and her charges berate "The Butcher" with a catchy modern-style hip-hop rap number (so yes, this is partly a musical!); crudely but cleverly animated children's sketches illustrate "The Chef's" flashing back to his father being killed by a corpulent eunuch for not satisfying his finicky culinary demands. Duped by his beloved, "The Butcher" skirmishes with her true beau in a Streetfighter-like video game scenario, complete with life-meters and flashing scores. This is truly unlike any other film made in mainland China to date, and while I wouldn't want to see an abundance of punked-out period pieces like this from the country, it is a long-overdue antidote to the seemingly inexhaustible supply of self-important, tiresomely nationalistic, cast-of-millions costumers that have flowed out of the country for nearly a decade now. This is like a breath of fresh air, even if much of it was previously exhaled by the likes of Takashi Miike in Japan. The fact remains, nobody was doing anything this over-the-top in China, and one wonders if this picture won't mark a turning point away from action pictures that do nothing but thump their celluloid chests. Executive produced by BOURNE IDENTITY director Doug Liman, though I suspect he attached his name after the project was in the can, as the version screened at TIFF also had the full 20th Century Fox (Asia) logo attached.

This is something I have not done, at all. So here it goes. I am going to review a trailer for this film. The film and the color scheme seen in the trailer for the film, is absolutely appealing to me, I am a colorful person. Literally. I like when films have extreme contrast in editing, since it looks like it has been edited with Vegas, and with plug ins, like New Blue.

The trailer seem descent enough to grab your attention and the whole music kind of thing resemble that of a fan-edit. I love that aspect of the trailer. They even choose a very recognizable font for the trailer text. Papyrus of all the fonts they could have, they chose this one, and it fits really good to it. Not to mention, since "Avatar" used this font for the film-title, I consider it to have exploded of popularity. The visual background on the text in the trailer is somewhat generic, but it keeps you interested. The story seems good enough to watch. It's about a blade / sword and three people connected to it. The film is executive produced by Doug Liman, the director of "The Bourne Identity". This is perhaps why it has gained somewhat of attention.

It's a great trailer for color enthusiasts and it has a comedic undertone. Especially the big fat character that at the end laugh kinda weird. Strange indeed I must say. I will definitely check this film out. My initial thoughts about is that it will be good and not to forget, entertaining and a fun ride in a martial arts adventure with strong colors. When I have seen it, a new review will enter.

The End