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Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman
Movie and comic nerds are looking forward to the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman film, but kung fu geeks were given a similar treat back in the early 1970's, when two icons of the martial arts genre squared off in Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman, a Taiwanese/Japanese co-production that perhaps isn't quite the epic one might be expecting, but is still nonetheless a fun slice of martial arts mayhem.
Jimmy Wang Yu was one of Asia's biggest stars at this point in time, but was virtually blackballed from working in Hong Kong after he tried to break a contract with the Shaw Brothers studio. So he found himself working mostly in Taiwanese productions, where he continued with the one-armed swordsman character (Fang Kang, here renamed Wang Kang) that made him so popular. However, as these cinematic trends tend to do, audiences were growing weary of the character, so producers wanted to inject new life into it. The Zatoichi films were also in a similar arc, and they were already employing the idea of crossovers, such as Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo -- so here we have the pairing of two classically (in their own way) Chinese and Japanese characters.
Interestingly, though both countries tend to paint each other poorly in films -- especially seen in Bruce Lee's "modern" oeuvre, which is based on large part on Lee not-so-subtly taking revenge for the wrongs the Japanese did to the Chinese in World War II -- here Fang Kang and Zatoichi are actually on the same side of the blade, but (as they both lament) their cultural misunderstandings and language barrier make them into enemies. In a genre that often employs loud and broad stereotypes to get its' point across, it was nice to see a film that didn't take the easy way out.
Of course, for as thought-provoking and well-done the dramatic scenes might be, if the onscreen martial arts is not up to snuff, all that effort would frankly be for naught. Thankfully, the fight scenes are, for the most part, well done and fun to watch. The direction in these scenes skews more towards the Japanese style of martial arts film-making of the time -- not as much kinetic action, rather more using the combatants to paint a part of a picture as a whole -- but it still works, even through some somewhat haphazard attempts to inject Hong Kong style wirework into the proceedings. RATING: 7 |
