When will bad guys learn that children witnessing the bloody murder of their families will not end well for them? Batman, Inglourious Basterds, The Princess Bride; leaving a child alive after committing unspeakable crimes is not a good strategy for a peaceful retirement. Thus when Tsai Ying-jie, played by the dashing and moody Tien Peng, dedicated his life to vengeance after seeing everyone he loved die, the gang of evil-doers really only had themselves to blame.
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The Swordsman of all Swordsmen follows this tail of revenge as Tsai Ying-jie hunts down the five five murderers one by one. Things take a few complicated turns, firstly in the form of Chiang Nan, the enigmatic swordsman Black Dragon, who wants nothing more than to fight Tsai to prove who is the greatest. But more confusingly for Tsai is Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng’s Flying Swallow, the daughter of the bandit leader Yun Chun-chung. Chun-chung, played by Tsao Tsien, is the one who had actually executed Tsai’s father so that he could obtain the legendary Spirit Chasing Sword. After a duel that doesn’t go Tsai’s way, Flying Swallow nurses him back to heath, forcing our hero to seriously reconsider the path he has chosen for himself.
The new 2K restoration is good on this limited edition release, though there is a reason the English dub comes with a huge warning before you play it. This is definitely one for those who enjoy subtitles. We’re also treated to a feature length commentary from Asian film expert Frank Djeng and film writer John Charles, both of whom seem rightly in awe of director Joseph Kuo, who also appears in the only other bonus feature – an archive interview.
There is a bonus disc included with this release, but rather than having anything to do with the Swordsman of all Swordsmen we’re instead treated to a second film, The Mystery of Chess Boxing. Also directed by Kuo, it’s something of a rare treat. There isn’t much restoration work, but for collectors this is a movie worth getting your hands on. It all comes with not one but two original audio commentaries, which oddly means it has more bonus content than the main film in this release.
The main thing to remember is that this has literally nothing to do with chess, instead it features the game xiangqi, sometimes called Chinese Chess by people too lazy to bother learning the name of a game that developed before what we now call chess. Additionally, as we should all now expect from Eureka Entertainment, there is a collector’s booklet, new art, and an o-card slipcase.
Full of mysticism, melodrama, and swordplay, The Swordsman of all Swordsmen comes from a golden age of wuxia movies. Yet it still manages to stand out, and is rightly regarded as a masterpiece of the genre. The lack of special features is heavily offset by the surprising inclusion of a whole other movie. It might have been nice to see some clean up work done on Chess Boxing, and both films featured properly, perhaps seeing this set touted as a Joseph Kuo double feature. But given the value of two movies well worth your time, this is an easy recommendation.
The Swordsman of all Swordsmen is out now on Limited Edition Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment.
