Brotherhood of Blades is a wuxia action thriller set in Ming
Dynasty China. It’s a well-crafted film with a familiar story with familiar
elements, and while the setting and action scenes give it a bit of flavouring
they don’t quite lift the film up to be more than a sum of its parts. It’s entertaining
and engaging for its length, but it feels like it falls just short of greatness despite the slick
presentation and some good performances.
In Ming Dynasty China, a corrupt eunuch official named Wei
has become too powerful, with his own clique of loyal followers and officials.
The young emperor decides to be rid of him and has him removed from his
position, then orders the Jinyiwei, the secret police and imperial assassins,
to hunt down and kill Wei and his supporters.
Sir Shen is a member of the Jinyiwei, leading a team,
including his two close friends Lian and Jianxing, in hunting down and
assassinating Wei supporters. When Shen finally tracks down Wei himself, the
man offers him a bounty of gold in return for letting him go. In a snap
decision, Shen agrees and fakes Wei’s death for the gold, hoping to use it to
buy better lives for himself and his friends. This decision has disastrous
consequences for the three, who find themselves marked for death by those who
want to keep Wei’s survival a secret.
It’s a familiar story, the sort we’ve seen plenty of times
before in various different genres. It’s the plot of a lot of gangster flicks,
political/corporate thrillers and a lot of similar wuxia/kung fu flicks.
Brotherhood of Blades does a decent job pulling it off, bolstered by a good
pace, exciting action and some decent performances. Political wheeling and
dealing, backstabbing, plotting and conspiracy makes up the background of the
movie, as characters try to manipulate situations to their own benefit. This
includes Shen, who tries to work things out for his friends and himself. Of
course, Shen does sort of screw his friends over by not disclosing everything
to them. When he tries to help them out, he kinda leaves them in the lurch or
makes their problems bigger. It has the inevitable scene of Shen coming clean
to his friends about the gold and the trio making a desperate last dash to get
out before they lose their heads. In this way it’s fairly predictable, though
the movie does take one or two different turns and remains engaging throughout.
The three main characters are well acted and well-developed. They all have some sort of issue they’re dealing with, and
honestly they’re all pretty basic and clichéd. Lian is being blackmailed and
Jianxing is trying to bribe his way to a much-delayed promotion. Sir Shen has
the odd/uncomfortable/somewhat common one of wanting to pay for a courtesan’s freedom
– something she doesn’t seem interested in because she doesn’t love him. It
makes Shen and a few scenes feel a bit creepy, even though it’s hinted that he
has noble reasons for what he’s doing (which clash with some of his actions).
The courtesan herself is a boring character. She’s the sort of delicate dainty
figure who stands there uselessly in the way of danger.
The action tends to be up close, with fast edits and
camerawork. It’s also bloody, with CG blood spurts a plenty. The fight choreography
is nothing special, but fights have a good pace, great framing and are usually
quick and brutal, giving them good impact. The battles aren’t large in grandeur
(which is fitting with the plot) but they’re framed well and are entertaining,
though there are some oddly missed opportunities towards the end (two of the
bigger fights happen in the background). In a weirdly refreshing way, the film gives some
justification for almost every villainous character or deed. While some are just
plain or blasé (the fat captain is just greedy), others have somewhat complex
motivations (the asshole blackmailing/bullying Lian turns out to be weirdly
complex in a way).
Brotherhood of Blades is entertaining and well made, but it
just lacks that special something to lift it up. There are a lot of similar
films that have told the same type of plot, and while the feudal setting and
wuxia styled action spice things up, the film doesn’t do anything different
with its story. A big reason is that there are no big surprises from the plot.
From the onset it’s made explicitly clear who is who and what is what. We know
who the villains are and why they’re doing what they’re doing very early into
the film, so there’re no big revelations or twists. It’s entertaining and engaging
throughout despite this, but it feels like it's lacking that little something to make it truly great. If I
were to use a rating system (which I feel I might need to, since a lot of my
reviews tend to be vague) I’d score it a 3 ½ out of 5.
