| The Valiant Ones |
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| Culture | |
| Saturday, 02 June 2007 | |
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Coming across like a martial arts variation on classic ensemble action films like The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, King Hu’s film The Valiant Ones concerns a group of highly skilled fighters (led by Yu Dayou, played by Roy Chiao) that are called in to defend a coastal Chinese village from a group of marauding pirates. After repelling these bandits, the group of fighters are quickly pressed into service by the authorities to oversee the delivery of a precious jewel, and ensure that it does not fall into the pirates’ hands. A complex plan is put into motion to throw the pirates off the trail of the jewel, while later the group devise an elaborate scheme to help them defeat the pirates. But the group of pirates is not an enemy that is easily defeated, and a series of spectacular battles ensues between valiant fighters and the deadly bandits. Along with a distinctive group of characters and an involving plot that keeps twisting and turning, The Valiant Ones employs a fractured editing style that is both disorientating and dazzling, using a succession of briefly seen images of combat that are sometimes elongated through the editing together of repeated shots of the same action. The effect of this frenetic style is at once overwhelming, but it is also gripping and thrusts us into the action. The confrontations between the valiant fighters and the pirates are depicted in a series of imaginative set-pieces, such as the suspenseful opening that shows the defence of the fishing village, and a ‘fight as a board game’ sequence, where the pieces on the game board are manipulated in response to signals from various lookouts (so that the bandits can plan what to do in the upcoming fight by ascertaining the position of the approaching pirates). Later on, there’s a master class of martial arts misdirection in a deserted temple (where all is not what it seems), and a protracted test at the pirates’ hideout, which focuses on two members of the group, an expert swordsman and his silent wife (played by Pai Ying and Hsu Feng, respectively). The two of them match their skills against various pirates (whose number includes Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah as two skilled fighters, and Sammo Hung as Hakatatsu, the leader of the pirates), so that they can prove themselves worthy of joining them. Add to this a gripping climatic battle that goes from inside the woods to outside on a pebbled beach, and the result is a visually arresting martial arts film that meticulously maps out its action scenes to create maximum suspense, and seems to stage every shot and choreograph every movement in the most unique and surprising way as possible. Martyn Bamber |
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