As totally different as they could be each aesthetically and culturally, there is a vital diploma of overlap between the Western and martial arts genres, a notion that is brilliantly underscored by The Quickest Sword. The Quickest Sword is a 1968 movie from the library of Shaw Brothers, a Hong Kong studio identified for its multitude of high quality, old-school kung fu films within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties.
The Quickest Sword lacks the excessive profile of different Shaw Brothers classics, like The thirty sixth Chamber of Shaolin, The 5 Lethal Venoms, and The One-Armed Swordsman, all movies which have robust instances for being among the many greatest martial arts films of all time. Boasting a lesser-known director in Pan Lei and virtually no star energy, it is a straightforward movie to miss, however one deserving of consideration.
The Quickest Sword Is A Spectacular Martial Arts Story Harking back to Western Classics
Set in historic China, The Quickest Sword tells the story of the Southern Sword, a well-known swordsman whose ambition and ruthlessness leads him to kill a number of fighters in duels. Considering he cannot be defeated, the principle protagonist finds himself humbled when he loses to an aged monk, and subsequently has to spend three years in his service.
The time spent with the monk modifications the Southern Sword, inflicting him to return to the martial arts world with a lot much less ambition and a better quantity of restraint on the subject of taking lives. Over the course of the story, the Southern Sword grows to hate the celebrity that comes along with his title, and the bloodshed that comes with it.
Granted, it is not a novel premise, as it has been performed a number of instances earlier than, significantly by films within the Western style. Numerous Westerns have centered their narratives round a person who’s continually pressured to defend his title because the quickest gunslinger within the West, whether or not he truly desires it or not.
The Quickest Sword is streaming on the Shout! TV streaming service.
The excessive worth of fame and the willingness to danger dying to develop into the very best are core themes of the Western style. Jingo Ringo relentlessly fought off challengers till his tragic dying in The Gunfighter, and characters performed by John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Glenn Ford, handled their variations of this journey in The Shootist, My Title is No person, and The Quickest Gun Alive respectively.
Within the instances of some, particularly The Gunfighter and The Shootist, this plotline paved the best way for some really unforgettable performances and dramatic moments. Regardless of the same degree of fanfare, The Quickest Sword is the martial arts style’s equal of that, providing a tortured efficiency from lead actor Lu Peng, whose character goes from a callous and proud killer to a person determined to surrender killing.
In the case of martial arts films, there is a tendency for the motion to be the first draw, however The Quickest Sword is a uncommon exception to this, as its dealing with of its central theme permits its dramatic storytelling and nice performing to hold the film, with the preventing sequences simply serving because the icing on the cake.