Dao

Plot synopsis:
In 1967, a pregnant woman is attacked by a vampire while giving birth. Doctors are able to save her baby, but the woman dies of infection.
Thirty-one years later, the child has become the vampire hunter Blade. He raids a rave club owned by the vampire Deacon Frost. Police take one of the vampires to the hospital, where he feeds on hematologist Karen Jenson and escapes. Blade takes Karen to a safe house where she is treated by his old friend Abraham Whistler. Whistler explains that he and Blade have been waging a secret war against vampires using weapons based on their elemental weaknesses, such as sunlight and silver. As Karen is now "marked" by the bite of a vampire, both he and Blade tell her to leave the city.
Meanwhile, at a meeting of vampire elders, Frost, the leader of a faction of younger vampires, is rebuked for trying to incite war between vampires and humans. As Frost and his kind were not born as vampires and are therefore not pure-bloods, they are considered socially inferior. In response, Frost has one of the elders executed and strips the others of their authority.
Upon returning to her apartment, Karen is attacked by a policeman, who is a "familiar", a human slave controlled by a vampire. Blade subdues the familiar and uses information from him to locate an archive of vampire history. Later, at the hideout, Blade injects himself with a special serum that prevents him from succumbing to his desire to drink blood, which would ultimately turn him into a vampire. However, the serum is beginning to lose its effectiveness due to overuse.
While experimenting with the anticoagulant EDTA as a possible replacement, Karen discovers that it explodes when combined with vampire blood. She manages to synthesize a vaccine that can cure the infected, but learns that it will not work on a human-vampire hybrid like Blade. Frost and his men attack the hideout, infect Whistler, and abduct Karen. When Blade returns, he helps Whistler commit suicide and arms himself with special syringes filled with EDTA.
When Blade attempts to rescue Karen from Frost's penthouse, he is subdued and taken to the Temple of Eternal Night, where Frost plans to perform the summoning ritual for La Magra, the vampire blood god. Blade is drained of his blood, but Karen allows him to drink from her, triggering his vampirism. Frost completes the ritual and obtains the powers of La Magra. Blade kills all of Frost's minions, including his mother, and confronts him. During their fight, Blade injects Frost with all of the syringes, causing his body to explode.
Karen offers to help Blade cure himself, but he asks her to create a new serum instead. In a brief epilogue, Blade kills a group of Russian vampires.

Tags: cult

Review:
The final action sequence, including Hung Yan-Yan, is now a legend in Kung-fu movies, just like the duel between Jet Li and Donnie Yen in Once Upon A Time in China 2...
the editing and camera-work seems to have influenced gladiator, with choppy nasty hits.the plot is rudimentary, something about sword-makers, evil bald men who probably eat little children and have swords with more gadgets than 4 James bond movies, and two badass friends who kick said guys bald ass.
The paradoxical, inadvertent and sometimes very futile violence in the film breeding and producing another violence (e.g. On's revenge for his dead father (where's no redemption) or those exposed little kids watching the bloody fight between that monk and bandits, which is if you think about it enormously provocative vestige of how the world must be so cruel when even a monk has become such a violent beast who then will only manifest that little hint of his smile at those small kids as some kind of a symbol of an inspiration for them - which is very morally inverted).
Very common thing in our world is also an involuntary or unconscious act that only brings about another killing and death to others - examples: Ding On inadvertently kills the prostitute Iron Head brought to himself, Ling's father is in fact responsible for a lot of hurt to come when he told Ding On the truth about his father.
Chiu Man Cheuk's Ding On initially was against the revenge (mind you the scene after the monk is dead) but Iron Head was all for it who also inadvertently divulged the place where they are from to bandits which would lead to another killing at the end at the Foundry, and etc..
The film even mentions things like buying and selling and at the same time showing the dog approaching some chunk of meat planted right in the big bear jaggy trap which ultimately kills him, the scenes like this are only exaggerated just to give us an idea and feeling of how hard it is to make it through in this world but Tsui Hark de-facto made it clear enough when increased or leveled up the whole hardness of the life in this film and showed us the way how to survive which systematically should be only motivating and inspiring for the viewers of this film.
Not Ding On or Iron Head, it was in fact Ling all along who's the most important character (not so strange that the whole film is also off her point of view) as she was also the only one left at the end of the movie still feeling the love for other people but as we see it's late because there's already no one to return her love.
What is so paradoxical is that everyone (save for her) in the film was actually neglecting the most important and powerful weapon for this violent world "love", what they were doing was absolutely futile, fruitless, nothing for anyone things which means they ended up as individuals with the complete lack of affection and love for anyone and by this ended up only producing another ceaseless violence that would lead only to downfall of the whole mankind, there was no end to this.
Based on the old-school kung-fu classic The One-Armed Swordsman, The Blade tells the story of a young man adopted by a renowned blacksmith, who discovers that his true father was killed by superstitiously powerful bandit named Lung, "who it is said can fly!".When he impulsively goes out seeking revenge, he runs afoul of a gang of desert scum and loses his right arm in the encounter.
With half a sword, half a technique, and still one arm short of a pair, he returns to his old home to confront both his past and the man who murdered his father.A simple tale of vengeful perseverance here gets a nihilistic gritty art-house treatment.
Even when characters are performing incredible feats, you find yourself thinking "So this is what kung-fu fighting was really like." Although Chiu Cheuk and villainous Xiong Xin Xin can certainly deliver spectacular physical displays (as seen in Hark's later Once Upon A Time in China films), in The Blade the camera and editing take the lead.
While some reviewers tend to forget the "cinema" part of "martial arts cinema", and complain that much of the action is concealed by the breakneck editing and moving camera, there is still an impressive amount of wushu on display in this film, and the frenzied cutting serves to heighten the excitement and the abilities of the performers, even without implied supernatural powers or gratuitous wire stunts.
Tsui Hark's Dao aka The Blade (Hong Kong, 1995) is an updating of the old one armed swordsman legend that also has been depicted earlier in the history of Hong Kong cinema.
The film turned out to be among the best Hong Kong cinema miracles from the nineties I've seen so far.Vincent Zhao Wen Zhuo aka Chiu Man Cheuk is Ting On and Moses Chan Ho is Iron Head and they're both very loyal to their master, an old monk who has teched them during their young lives.
Soon a violent murder takes place, a hand gets chopped off and revenge comes to mind, but none of the characters seem to care or think about their emotions but only to go after their insticts which in this case are mostly about violence and getting even.
What follows is more or less (usually more) amazing imagery and bits of sword fighting from this unique film maker of East.The film depicts people without the willing or ability to express their emotions and that's why many of the reviews seem to dislike the film telling the characters are very cold and inhuman.
The visuals here are quite amazing and this belongs alongside Ringo Lam's Burning Paradise (1994) and Billy Chung's The Assassin (1993) to the Hong Kong's hyper dark martial art films that never are as near as "light" and also humorous as some Once Upon a Time in China (1991) for instance or other box office hits.
Hardly any mainstream audience will like films like Dao because they lack almost every possible entertaining or pleasant element that can be found in Hong Kong martial arts films.
The film is very dark and haunting especially when the guy has lost his arm and is training in agony in the misty and menacing house with hysterical female (this character is also very bad and should not have been so noisy and really brainless all the time) taking care of him.
The action is so incredible it again makes me wonder how they edit their films like this.
This end fight is like the mind blowingly incredible finale in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow 2, choreographed by the great Ching Siu Tung: both of these finales get so over the top and (thus) separated from the rest of the film that it gets even surreal and thus makes the film's own world look even more impressive and striking and hammers the message and images to the viewer's head.
The blood sprayed in these both cases is much more than just results of blade cutting flesh as it all depicts things from our main characters and their values much more effectively and graphically (to say the least) than words likely could.
The finale in Dao is among the most jaw dropping scenes from any Hong Kong film of all time and once again these makers have shown their talent and capacity.
Since there are no any real heros, no good characters and not too much sunshine in Dao, it is easy to expect that sadly this kind of film won't appeal to masses but considering that it starts to look even more valuable that films like these get still made despite that fact.Dao also lacks all the possible stupid bits of dialogue that often can be found in Hong Kong films.
Details like these tell much more about the characters than any fastly and badly written unnatural words ever could.Dao is a stunning experience even with its flaws and if they were corrected and fixed, this film would really be a masterpiece and maybe perfect of its kind.
Now it definitely is a masterpiece of its maker, Tsui Hark, and it has the kind of potential and power that keeps on reminding the admirers of Eastern cinema of what makes these films so unique, precious and overwhelming.
In reality of this bleak world Tsui Hark showing us the way how to survive and at the same time there's searching for non-existent love and harmony (almost i'd say the lost paradise), it is so far away from a usual action film, it's more about a wicked human behaviour and feelings, very interesting demonstration of a corrupt world wherein is not a way of escape.
Though not a revolutionary landmark film of the high caliber of "Seven Swords", yet, this masterpiece is another proof (with many more - Chinese Feast, Don't Play With Fire, Peking Opera Blues, Green Snake, Butterfly Murders, Once Upon A Time In China, Seven Swords, Legend Of Zu) that an innovator and revolutionary perfectionist "Tsui Hark" rightfully belongs to the same league of such greats like H.Hawks, O.Welles, A.Kurosawa, F.Truffaut, S.Leone, S.Fuller, J.L.Godard, R.Polanski.
Yes, it's another HK movie with great demonstrations of martial arts -with swords and blood-, heroism and revenge.
Tsui Hark puts unusual sadness in his movie and a strong sexual atmosphere : Valerie Chow is really amazing as a crazy prostitute and Chiu Man Chek is much sexier and a better actor than Jet Li or Chow-Yun Fat. Between the efficiency of Tai-Chi and the melancholy of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Tsui Hark had the guts to do an "arty" martial-arts flick in a time when Hong Kong's cinemas were filled with boring street dramas and uninspired movies made by temporary Wong Kar-wai wannabes.
Obviously inspired by the critical success of "CHUNGKING EXPRESS", Tsui Hark (like many other directors of that time) tried to do a film for a thinking audience.
This movie was the one of the first true martial artist films I have seen.
I have to suppose that the camera was speeded up, but it wasn't obvious except that a person should be breathing harder than they were if they were actually moving as fast as it looked they were.I liked the realistic "gritty" aspects of the lifestyle of the characters that was portrayed in this film.
I mean, cutting off the arm of the main character isn't enough, there happens and has happened a lot more to him that forms him and leads up to his decision of seeking revenge, which is also aimed at multiple different people.
The action and fight sequences themselves are of course also greatly choreographed, as you would expect from a genre movie such as this one.
The great thing about this film (and the sort of thing that upsets people who like seeing martial arts fights where you can see every kick and every punch) is that most of the fighting is just blurs of motion punctuated by shouting and clashing blades.
This is what I love in HK fantasies: fight scenes that are so incomprehensible you're left going: huh?Tsui Hark's best example is Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, where the viewer has to actually fill in the blanks for themselves.
It's edited in such a way that that the film we see feels like only a portion of the story.
It's hard to think of a more effective way of setting up a backstory, and gives new life to that tired old cliche, the revenge story.So that's all good.
Unfortunately, in his first confrontation with the murderer, a tattooed character that looks like he jumped from the pages of a comic book, our hero is brutally beaten and loses an arm.
Although some of the action could be seen as a little far fetched (and story-wise the film is really melodrama), the persistent realism of the film really sinks in and swinging around chain weapons seems like a really dangerous thing to do.
Tsui Hark is a great director and action seemed to be his "thing".
"Dao" was a good movie, even though the story gets maybe a little bit too boring in the middle of the film.
I was not disappointed watching 'Dao' ('The Blade'), a dark movie with great visuals.
We see how he loses his limb, how he trains in martial art and will seek that revenge.Like I said this is a dark movie, with dark themes as well.
I like these kind of sequences when they have a certain effect for the movie, and here I think it was the right choice.
I'd heard many good things about this movie and having enjoyed much of Tsui Hark's work before, was looking forward to a masterpiece, especially seeing as it's a remake of the Shaw Brother's Classic, One Armed Swordsman, but ultimately I was quite disappointed.
The initial ambush where On loses his arm is riveting, as bandits seemingly fly out the woodwork and numerous hidden bear traps snap shut on limbs and the later fight sequences such as On defending his adopted home or the bandit assault on the sword foundry are packed to the rafters with flashing blades and high body-counts, blood spattering everywhere.However, what lets it all down is the narrative component and the overall impression I got was that Tsui Hark came up with the idea for several sword fighting showpieces, then tacked the storyline on as an afterthought.
What makes this worse is that the film spends way too much time focusing on the female narrator, a girl in love with both On and his co-worker Iron Head.
Throw in some flimsy philosophical musings (she's constantly going on about the war in her heart) and she becomes a very unsympathetic character, each time her voice over crops up you can't help but looking at the running time and hoping she finishes soon so we can get back to more about sword fighting and revenge.It's not a bad film, but far below the standard that I had hoped for.
Although Hark Tsui seems to be a productive man in the Hong Kong movie business - he has acted, produced, written and directed really a lot of movies - I can't say that I've heard of him before.
as long as they contribute to the story."Dao" or "The Blade" as it is called in English, starts with telling how the daughter of the master of a saber factory is in love with two men that work for her father.
All he wants is to find the evil Kung-Fu master who is said to be able to fly and who has brutally murdered his father...Like I said before, I'm very new to the genre, but it's already obvious to me that there must be some different styles in these movies.
THE BLADE is a well-regarded Tsui Hark martial arts flick that was envisaged as a remake of the Wang Yu Shaw Brothers classic, THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN.
It's very familiar to fans of 1990s Hong Kong cinema, full of dark and moodily-lit scenes, hysterical characters and a predominance of action over storyline.That's not to say that the plotting isn't interesting: this film resembles a western in that much of the action is limited to arid desert villages where gangs of bandits roam and kill at will.
Chiu Man Cheuk (THE BLACK SHEEP AFFAIR) is the eponymous hero, a man driven into exile by the machinations of a frustrated girl who finds himself compelled to avenge the death of his father.I'm no great fan of Hark as a director, because sometimes his films feel bitty and all over the place, and his editing is a little too sloppy for my liking.
Tsui Hark's re-imagining of Chang Cheh's 1967 Dubei dao (The One-Armed Swordsman), is (in the words of Subway Cinema curators) "a psycho-tronic phantasmagoria full of scars and tattoos, mutilation, amputation, sexual frustration, and sharp, heavy chunks of steel splitting muscle and breaking bones" - but most of all a story of love and kindness in a world that may be damaged beyond redemption.Original Music by Ying-Wah Wong (as Raymond Wong) and Wai Lap Wu is fantastic.
The fight scenes are impressive, of course, as Tsui's directing power is still at its peak.A good film for those interested in smarter WU XIA films but not in the mood to tackle Ashes of Time.
Its main problem lies in Hark's decision to film everything in a close up, rapid editing, music video style that makes the action incomprehensible 90% of the time and just plain irratating.
Blade is a Hong Kong movie directed by Hsui Hark.
It starts with the narration of a woman who talks like the two young men at the sword factory, On and Iron Head, will end up contesting for her hand in marriage.
This is Tsui Hark's best film.
Every time I watch my copy I am still blown away by how good it is but at the same time, how bad my copy is hurts.Ah well, about the film itself: It is narrated by Ling, the daughter of a master sword smith.
Yes it IS a remake of The One Armed Swordsman, but Tsui Hark makes it HIS.
With 'The Blade' I think Hark Tsui did a great and remarkable remake of Cheh Chang's One-armed Swordsman 1967, telling us the story in a more darker way with a surrealist technique.
Although there are many additional side stories in the movie, yet Hark Tsui managed to maintain the real story of the one armed swordsman.
With harsh and darks scenes all foggy and bloody fighting, The Blade is a must watch film for those who love Wu Xia..
What I saw was one of the worst displays of movie making I've ever seen.I can't help but feel like the director want to have every muscle guy in Hong Kong in this movie.