The Swordsman of All Swordsmen (1968)

10TH OLD SCHOOL KUNG FU FEST: SWORD FIGHTING HEROES EDITION REVIEW!

What would you do if your parents were murdered? Would you avenge their deaths? In the case of Tsai Ying-Chieh (Peng Tien), he has made it his lifelong journey to do just that, to find the people responsible and bring them to bloody justice. He has made it his life goal to become the The Swordsman of All Swordsmen, preparing himself to be the most menacing threat to those who have wronged him. He’s trained for years; will he get his revenge?

Full of high-powered action sequences, The Swordsman of All Swordsman, from beginning to end does a beautiful job of keeping viewers engaged, focused on the journey in which Tsai travels throughout. I’m not sure a moment ever passes that viewers aren’t invested in Tsai’s story, and while drama and romance play a role in his story, it’s the action that ultimately allows everything to come to life. While The Swordsman of All Swordsmen does a wonderful job of developing this character and allowing him to evolve throughout, at his core he is a man set on revenge–and that’s something that greatly appeals to audiences.

Director Joseph Kuo knows what his viewers want in regard to the action, and he constantly finds new ways to bring these moments to life. Every step of the way these moments become more extreme, a little more ridiculous, but extreme nonetheless. They find new pockets of cinema to explore, and The Swordsman of All Swordsmen constantly ups the ante as we progress through the film. By the end of the film viewers see fights that border on ridiculous, but there’s a linear journey on which this aspect of the film travels, and nothing feels out of place as a result.

The journey certainly makes The Swordsman of All Swordsmen worth a watch, but the finale has one issue, it’s anticlimactic. The Swordsman of All Swordsmen ultimately fails to conclude the film in a way that does the rest of the story justice. I waited for something to come of this journey, for things to be neatly wrapped up by the film’s end, but that never came to be. While this ultimately leads to two sequels, this installment in the trilogy ultimately fails to be bookended in a way that it should have been.

Again, it’s the journey that ultimately makes the film worthwhile–and that all begins with the writing of Shui-Han Chiang, Tien-Yung Hsu, and Kuo. They create something that is certainly farfetched, something that extends itself past the bounds of reality, but still exists in a place that viewers everywhere will be able to access. The reality is that avenging your parents isn’t something that we all experience in our lifetime, fighting skilled swordsman, and floating from building to building are likely things that we will never see come to fruition in our time here on earth–however, dealing with the loss of a loved one is something we all unfortunately must face. Extending The Swordsman of All Swordsmen to a semi-magical place doesn’t take away from this reality, it just presents it to viewers in a new and unique fashion. Viewers are able to suspend their disbelief in these moments and appreciate all that is being done as a result of the story that the three writers are able to develop–and The Swordsman of All Swordsman is brought to life and easily understood and appreciated as a result.

The sometimes far-fetched nature of the film could potentially be off putting to some, but I believe that the realistic nature of what Tsai experiences throughout the course of The Swordsman of All Swordsmen will appeal to the masses and allow many that sit on the fence to appreciate what is being said and done. While the conclusion of the film is less than ideal, the majority of the film employs a series of action-packed sequences that will appeal to viewers and drive the film forward from beginning to (the almost) end.

Directed by Joseph Kuo.

Written by Shui-Han Chiang, Tien-Yung Hsu, & Joseph Kuo.

Starring Peng Tien, Polly LIng-Fing Shang-Kuan, Meng-Hua Yang, Nan Chiang, Chien Tsao, etc.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10