The great tragedy of John Woo's Last Hurrah for Chivalry is that its storytelling can't match its action scenes. For such an early movie, it's astonishing to see how in-control Woo was with his fight choreography. The group sword fight scenes, particularly the ones at the start and end of the film, are especially astonishing due to their size. Framing them like they were scenes out of one of the musicals that Woo grew up watching and loving, they are filmed largely in medium-long shots with long(ish) unbroken takes. I've rarely seen a martial arts film where the fighting looked so much like dancing. The individual villains in the third act have some of the most iconic and memorable fighting styles outside of the Five Deadly Venoms, particularly the Sleeping Buddha, a swordsman whose skills are unsurpassable...as long as he is asleep. He is now on the short list alongside Long Armed Devil from Chang Cheh's One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and the yoga master from Jimmy Wang's Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976) as one of my all-time favorite kung fu antagonists. But the central narrative about deception and shifting allegiances wasn't handled properly. By the one hour mark I had completely lost track of the story and who was fighting or not fighting whom and why (although I had mostly figured the story out again in time for the last act).
7/10
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