If The Shaw Brothers were known for only one thing, it was for their martial arts flicks. The genre wasn't their sole strength, and other studios could claim excellence of their own, but there's a reason they were the go-to name in Hong Kong cinema. Exquisite choreography weaves together a diverse range of styles, and excellent stunts, with smart cinematography and editing that never shortchanges the blows and impact as is all too commonly true of modern action flicks. To this add reliably gorgeous, heavily detailed sets and costume design that effectively rival the kung fu - and in some cases, like here, an abundance of beautiful filming locations that are very easy on the eyes. The Shaw Brothers put the "art" in "martial arts," and 'The sentimental swordsman' is no exception.
Not all is well, however. To be frank, the storytelling is astonishingly forthright, blunt, and downright tactless, to the point of being painfully gawky. The first twenty minutes or so, in particular, are so rough that I almost reconsidered watching; while the writing does improve in some measure as the length draws on, the suspension of disbelief that the plot requires far exceeds most any other picture I've ever seen. Yes, in many cases the tale on hand is only a vehicle for the martial arts action in the first place, but whether one wishes to ascribe the difficulties to the root story or to the screenplay, the writing here comes across to me as sloppy and ill-considered. There are plenty of great ideas here, certainly, yet from one moment to the next a preponderance of the dialogue, scene writing, and each narrative beat in turn are penned with a Just So sensibility that pointedly strips away every last vestige of nuance. In exact inverse proportion to how magnificent and finessed the visuals are, the storytelling is dubious and clunky.
I still think 'The sentimental swordsman' is enjoyable, for the action alone is outstanding, and even at its most tawdrily club-footed there remains just enough strength in the saga to keep it interesting. Even through to the very end, however, when we learn who the Plum Blossom Bandit is and their motivations, one can only respond to the tale with a confounded "what?" What it comes down to is that if you want marvelously, spellbinding, meticulous stunts and fight choreography, and supreme martial arts action, then you've come to the right place. If you want a feast for the eyes, generally, then you've come to the right place. If you want a good narrative to accompany that splendor, you emphatically need to look elsewhere. And for the fact that we get everything we could possibly want out of other Shaw Brothers flicks, including those qualities that this lacks, the question unfortunately becomes why we would spend time here in the first place.
It's worth checking out if you come across it, but definitely don't go out of your way for it. 'The sentimental swordsman' is good, but distinctly flawed in important ways, and it's not nearly as much fun as it could have been if as much care were taken in the writing as had been applied to the action sequences and the sets. Oh well.
