When a genre master returns after years away from the field, you pay attention. Wuxia veteran Tsui Hark, one of the major figures from Hong Kong cinema’s golden age, has returned with the historical fantasy Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants. While he’s worked in many different genres, Condor Heroes marks the sixth consecutive decade in which the legend has directed a wuxia film. And while it doesn’t reach the stellar heights of some of his masterpieces (the Once Upon a Time in China series, Peking Opera Blues), it’s an entertaining, stylish new big-budget addition to his long roster of winners.
Based on a portion of Jin Yong’s oft-adapted novel The Legends of the Condor Heroes, the movie follows the heartfelt romance between Guo Jing (Xiao Zhan), a boyish martial arts master raised by Mongols, and Huang Rong (Zhuang Dafei), a young woman who is also studying martial arts. The two lovers’ paths diverge after a tragedy, and against the backdrop of a bloody conflict between the Mongols and the Jin dynasty in 12th-century China, they try to find each other amid the war-torn landscape.
Image: Sony Pictures
Guo Jing has mastered a new martial art called the Novem Force, which has drawn the attention of other jealous martial arts masters who want to steal his secrets. The Novem Force grants some airbending abilities, like many wuxia martial arts forms. (Wuxia was a major influence on Avatar: The Last Airbender and some of its fighting styles.) In particular, the martial art allows Guo Jing to aim the force of blows around objects: He can strike at a tree, but the force of the blow goes around it to hit a rock behind it.
That sets up some fantastic fight sequences between Guo Jing and other martial artists with unique approaches. There’s an opponent with a sharp throwing disc and the ability to generate poison clouds, and Guo Jing has to find creative ways to counter these weapons with wind. It’s one of quite a few intricate fights in the movie with satisfying payoffs, including one against an enemy (Tony Leung Ka-fai) who uses the always-entertaining Toad style, and plenty of massive military battles that show off Mongolian horse archer tactics.
Image: Sony Pictures
Image: Sony Pictures
The movie culminates in a blistering final showdown, where the different powerful martial arts forms square off in the middle of a siege. Hark is a master at understanding the relationship between the camera, the bodies in motion, and the space around them, creating dynamic sequences that are full of life in spite of the sometimes-dodgy CGI. (Although it’s worth noting that the wind and smoke powers look very good.)
As a director, Hark has always been known for his flair and sense of style, and Legends of the Condor Heroes certainly delivers on this front. The use of light and shadow in particular is evocative, drawing attention to moments in battle or obscuring faces and bodies. Guo Jing’s martial arts masters, the Seven Odds, are filmed almost like the Ringwraiths in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, seemingly consisting solely of long cloaks and shadow, which adds a sense of mystery and danger to their presence.
Image: Sony Pictures
In a later scene, when our hero discovers the corpses of people he cares about, Hark frames the bodies at the bottom of the screen, holding Guo Jing’s shadow on a wall as the center of the frame as he drops to his knees in grief. It’s a stark moment, strengthened by Hark’s restraint in not cutting to Guo Jing’s face.
Hark also deploys creative camera movement with unexpected long zooms, stylish transitions between scenes, a massive sense of scale, and selective use of smashing images together to create interesting collages. While the narrative of Legends of the Condor Heroes is sometimes plodding — especially in the middle of its 146-minute run time — it never fails to be stylish or engaging. It’s a satisfying return for one of the great directors of his era.
Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants is now playing in limited theatrical release.
