The Sword - 名劍

The Sword (名劍) is a 1980 film out of Hong Kong starring Adam Cheng. The film would fall into the martial arts and wuxia genre.

While searching for information about this film, two sources mention different adaption origins. The first is that its adapted from a Ying Huang (黃鷹) novel and second says its adapted from one of the 5 novels of Wang Dulu's Crane-Iron Series. When I dig more, I can't confirm either of these sources adaption claims. My Chinese is too limited for me to get far.

The movie is about Adam Cheng as a swordsman out to make a name for himself. That name being the best in the wu ling (martial arts world). Along the way, he ends up dueling and fighting many people.

The martial arts in the movie can either excite you or annoy you. There is a lot of editing during the fight scenes. To demonstrate the dynamics of Ching Gong, excessive tumbling and flips are done through the air. Wire fu was already pretty sophisticated back in 1979/1980. So its a preview of things to come in the 1980s and the its maturity in the 1990s.

I thought it was quite a depressing story frankly. The story drags and the fighting is for a purpose. When the goal is achieved, what than? This was a thinking mans wuxia movie. Its a similar dynamic as "Duel to the Death - 生死決".

I think I might get it again from Netflix and watch it again.