Legendary Martial Arts Choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping steps back into the director’s chair for the bloody epic Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert.
Martial Arts fans around the world rejoice… Master Yuen Woo-Ping has returned to the director’s chair for Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert. The 80-year-old multi-hyphenate has crafted an epic piece of cinema that feels more influenced by Mad Max: Fury Road and his own filmography than anything currently. Part rousing journey/adventure, palace intrigue, political thriller, and family melodrama rolled up into an action film with the director’s trademark complex choreography.
Set during the Sui dynasty in China, a lone Bounty Hunter Dao Ma is thrown in the middle of a political powder keg. He is offered financial freedom in exchange for transporting a revolutionary Zhishilang (Sun Yizhou) to a safer province. The offer is too good to pass up, as Dao Ma has caused his own issues with the local governor (Jet Li, in a great cameo). Dao Ma quickly finds that the price may be too great as Zhishilang and his own troubles bring a literal army down upon them. Their only allies are another infamous Bounty Hunter (Yu Shi), his bounty (Li Yunxiao), and the daughter of the man who got him into the entire quagmire.
Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert is a densely plotted film, to say the least. There are at a minimum five major plot threads and close to a dozen characters that one must track. Names and title cards fly past with little care for your understanding of the plot mechanics or character relationships. If one can keep up, it is a fairly straightforward story of family betrayals and slights against the bigger backdrop of a China Reunification.
That is secondary, though, to the unrivaled action that an audience is in store for. Woo-Ping has crafted a film that feels like a summation of the work he is known for. Everything down to each choreographed gesture is designed with character and spectacle in mind. Each of the final crafted set pieces is pure cinema in the way Woo-Ping’s own Iron Monkey or The Matrix Reloaded (which he choreographed) are. Visual maximalism imbued with character and story during extended scenes of physicality that melt your brain at the speed and force they come at you.
The standout moment is the center piece extended chance in the desert that leads to a fight in the middle of a sandstorm. Yes, this does invoke George Miller’s Fury Road, but Woo-Ping’s film is so brashly original in the way that it approaches this fight and chase, it feels more like a playful nod and wave than any sort of thievery. It’s the kind of moment you. can feel that both directors would have a chuckle over.
Like Miller’s film, that stand storm set piece is not the end of the film but merely a rest stop in a breathlessly paced action adventure. One that does not stop until its heroes and audience are left gasping for air as though they’ve run a marathon. Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert, by its end, promises more installments. This is the rare instance where one hopes that Woo-Ping delivers on that promise of further adventures in the particular area of historical fiction he’s created and that the cameo by the director, along with his fellow legends Zhang Xinyan (director of The Shaolin Temple and Tai Chi Boxer) and Wu Bin (coach of the Beijing Wushu Team) is not a good-bye but rather a cheeky see you later.
Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert debuts Digitally June 30th.
Legendary Martial Arts Choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping steps back into the director’s chair for the bloody epic Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert.
Martial Arts fans around the world rejoice… Master Yuen Woo-Ping has returned to the director’s chair for Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert. The 80-year-old multi-hyphenate has crafted an epic piece of cinema that feels more influenced by Mad Max: Fury Road and his own filmography than anything currently. Part rousing journey/adventure, palace intrigue, political thriller, and family melodrama rolled up into an action film with the director’s trademark complex choreography.
Set during the Sui dynasty in China, a lone Bounty Hunter Dao Ma is thrown in the middle of a political powder keg. He is offered financial freedom in exchange for transporting a revolutionary Zhishilang (Sun Yizhou) to a safer province. The offer is too good to pass up, as Dao Ma has caused his own issues with the local governor (Jet Li, in a great cameo). Dao Ma quickly finds that the price may be too great as Zhishilang and his own troubles bring a literal army down upon them. Their only allies are another infamous Bounty Hunter (Yu Shi), his bounty (Li Yunxiao), and the daughter of the man who got him into the entire quagmire.
Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert is a densely plotted film, to say the least. There are at a minimum five major plot threads and close to a dozen characters that one must track. Names and title cards fly past with little care for your understanding of the plot mechanics or character relationships. If one can keep up, it is a fairly straightforward story of family betrayals and slights against the bigger backdrop of a China Reunification.
That is secondary, though, to the unrivaled action that an audience is in store for. Woo-Ping has crafted a film that feels like a summation of the work he is known for. Everything down to each choreographed gesture is designed with character and spectacle in mind. Each of the final crafted set pieces is pure cinema in the way Woo-Ping’s own Iron Monkey or The Matrix Reloaded (which he choreographed) are. Visual maximalism imbued with character and story during extended scenes of physicality that melt your brain at the speed and force they come at you.
The standout moment is the center piece extended chance in the desert that leads to a fight in the middle of a sandstorm. Yes, this does invoke George Miller’s Fury Road, but Woo-Ping’s film is so brashly original in the way that it approaches this fight and chase, it feels more like a playful nod and wave than any sort of thievery. It’s the kind of moment you. can feel that both directors would have a chuckle over.
Like Miller’s film, that stand storm set piece is not the end of the film but merely a rest stop in a breathlessly paced action adventure. One that does not stop until its heroes and audience are left gasping for air as though they’ve run a marathon. Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert, by its end, promises more installments. This is the rare instance where one hopes that Woo-Ping delivers on that promise of further adventures in the particular area of historical fiction he’s created and that the cameo by the director, along with his fellow legends Zhang Xinyan (director of The Shaolin Temple and Tai Chi Boxer) and Wu Bin (coach of the Beijing Wushu Team) is not a good-bye but rather a cheeky see you later.
Blades of the Guardians: Wind Rises in the Desert debuts Digitally June 30th.
Share this:
Like this:
Discover more from The Movie Isle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.