Legend of the Liquid Sword

1993... All I can think is what was Wong Jing smoking that year? Liquid Swords and The Evil Cult were both the work of Wong Jing in 1993 and both bear some of the same irritating similarities.

I tend to enjoy martial arts fantasy movies, however when I am required to keep track of a cast of Shakespearean "julius Caesar" proportions I tend to lose interest quickly. Much like The Evil Cult this movie has so many characters, so many warring on-again-off-again factions and blood ties it makes your head spin trying to keep up with it all. I'll end my comparison of similarities between this film and The Evil Cult by saying Wong Jing must have had a fetish for human-bat-vampire creatures in 1993 as both lay predominant roles in both films.

I had less of an attention span and tolerance for Liquid Swords than I did for The Evil Cult for 2 reasons. #1 ... Liquid Swords just seemed to go on and on and on and on. The movie seemed very long to me, even at 1 hour and 20 minutes on the copy I have it seemed to go for 3 hours, 3 days, even 3 years. The second aspect that detracted value from this film was the use of fast motion. If you're going to have spectacular wire-fu fight scenes the breathtaking aspect of those fight scenes are completely lost when you speed up the film to intentionally, or unintentionally make the action look silly. I'm not sure which was the case here. Part of me says Wong Jing was trying to be funny by speeding up some for the fight scenes, but the cynic in me says if there fight scenes had been done at regular speed the movie would have seemed to have dragged on for what seems like 4 hours instead of only seeming like 3.

The fight scenes that re at normal speed are just standard wire fu fare, nothing really special here. Avoid this movie unless you're a die hard fan of Wong Jing and looking to see every movie he ever had a hand in.