Brotherhood of Blades

 

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.