At long last, I finally got around to watching Return of the One-Armed Swordsman. Even though I had already seen and enjoyed the first and last film in the trilogy, it still took me forever until I watched Return, which I noticed has gotten mixed reviews. I didn’t really know what to expect from this movie. The movie starts off where the first one left off. Fang Kang (Jimmy Wang Yu), who now lives on a farm with his wife (Chiao Chiao), is invited to a swordplay competition which he ultimately declines. One of the schools that participates finds out that the competition is only a ploy in order to kill of the other swordplay schools. Their masters are kept captive and Fang Kang is appointed to help them on their mission.
I more or less expected Return to be a lot like the original: Slow pacing, a lot of story, little action. But this movie turned out to be the complete opposite. It opens with a similar tone to the first. There’s a slowly developing and kinda interesting story. But after the 20-minute mark, this movie basically turns into an extremely violent and over the top romp. And to some, that might sound great. But to me, I found the violence a bit disturbing.
I more or less expected Return to be a lot like the original: Slow pacing, a lot of story, little action. But this movie turned out to be the complete opposite. It opens with a similar tone to the first. There’s a slowly developing and kinda interesting story. But after the 20-minute mark, this movie basically turns into an extremely violent and over the top romp. And to some, that might sound great. But to me, I found the violence a bit disturbing.
I feel that the one of the reasons why I found Return more disturbing than a more violent movie like Five Element Ninjas is that (1) most of the deaths (certainly not all of the deaths) in Return are more grounded in reality. Some of the deaths more horrific than if they had an element of “fantasy” in them, like the deaths in Five Element Ninjas. And (2), the continuous onslaught of deaths never ends. Five Element Ninjas had occasional breaks to focus on the story. In Return, there is no story. The movie is just a collection of ridiculous and jaw-dropping death scenes; Some of which are so ridiculous that they’re sometimes hilarious. But in most cases, I found the action more brutal and morbid than entertaining.
Even though the film was mostly low on story and characters, I was still impressed by most of the action scenes and by the inventive, gimmicky villains. Without a doubt, my favorite villain was Hua Niangzi played by Essie Lin, partially because she’s easy to look at and also because it’s interesting to see her entice her victims before killing them with knives hidden in her dress. Probably the best scenes in the movie involve her. I especially love the moments where the fighters are about to kill her, but hesitate because of how seemingly innocent she is. She was a phenomenal villain.
Even though the film was mostly low on story and characters, I was still impressed by most of the action scenes and by the inventive, gimmicky villains. Without a doubt, my favorite villain was Hua Niangzi played by Essie Lin, partially because she’s easy to look at and also because it’s interesting to see her entice her victims before killing them with knives hidden in her dress. Probably the best scenes in the movie involve her. I especially love the moments where the fighters are about to kill her, but hesitate because of how seemingly innocent she is. She was a phenomenal villain.
The nonstop action and gimmicky villains can make this movie a lot of fun at times, but it seems that Chang Cheh was more focused on trying to find inventive ways to kill people than trying to form a good story. I can easily see many people enjoying this movie for the cartoony action and incredibly noticeable flaws, but I can’t really say this is a good movie per se. The violence was excessive, relentless, and even kinda unnerving. Yeah, it’s an entertaining flick, but it’s probably my least favorite film in the trilogy. Sure, this movie has a much faster pace than the original, but in short, Return of the One-Armed Swordsman is essentially just a 100-minute long collection of shockingly violent death scenes and that's about it.
Images from HKMDb and HK Cinemagic
Images from HKMDb and HK Cinemagic