Since Asia the Invincible (Brigitte Lin) seemingly died at the end of part 2, several impersonators try to rule in her name. When a Spanish conquistador and a masked Japanese warlord attempt to conquer the land during this chaos and confusion, the real Asia returns with a vengeance. It seems at first that a villain of the previous part turned hero for this sequel, but Asia's rage is not under control, she says love is gone and hate is all that remained.

"Swordsman III" is - even more than "Swordsman II" - a celebration of Brigitte Lin, larger than life, a goddess of war. You find less sense of humor than before in the final part of the trilogy, but a stunning lesbian love scene involving Joey Wang from "Chinese Ghost Story" - actually it's about a woman pretending to be a man with a man pretending to be a woman... read that twice - is thrown in for compensation. The European version is about 10 minutes shorter than the Asian one, and probably one scene was cut for blasphemy when Asia humiliates the Spanish priest, forcing him to worship her instead of their catholic god. I voted 8 of 10 for each part of the trilogy, because on one hand, they all have too many little narrative flaws to get near a perfect 10, but on the other hand, they are all highly entertaining and equally recommendable.

As the 3rd film of the Swordsman trilogy I found that I wondered why they bothered to make it at all; as it did nothing to compliment the first 2 in the trilogy! I have been watching Chinese films, for over 35 years now, and this is top of my worst Chinese films ever made (and that is really saying something when you consider the copious amounts of sheer lying rubbish in propaganda films they put out)! As I do not speak any Chinese whatsoever I had to rely upon English subtitles (all that are available on the internet are absolutely terrible) and, I could find only one translation which was utterly terrible (it was like a broke broken mistranslated gobbledygook); it was not translated by a person who could speak both languages but more likely machine based etc. So it made the film even worse to view.

It continues from where the 2nd film left off (the actors being Brigitte Lin- once again - and the superb Jet Li) but is completely confusing, badly edited and a lousy story-line/script etc. It jumped all over the place with far too much fantasy action thrown in; which was in fact so stupid/bad in its look on the screen. It was like the director and co didn't have a clue what to do with the story, actors roles, action and continuity of the first 2 films. The films of this era (and 20 plus years before) used Hi-wire and off screen equipment - trampolines etc - for special FX; the CGI of the era you could say. The problem is it is vastly overused and looks terrible in every shot! As a long time viewer of Chinese martial Arts films I am used to the special FX used at the time and that's how I know that these were cheap looking and just terrible!

One of the reviewers tries to entice you to watch it by saying that there is a fantastic lesbian love scene...what a click-baiting liar! The scene is between the goddess, Brigitte Lin, and her concubine, Snow (who turns out to be a demon in disguise) who are fully clothed in a scene that lasts about 4 seconds.

I surprised there are so many likes for this film by the reviewers because the film to me played out as though it had been made by a clueless teenager...a young one at that! Its gotten a 1 star from me, only because I have too give it mark of some level, but the only nice thing about this film is looking at the beautiful Brigitte Lin!

I like everyone connected with this movie, cast and crew - but I don't like the movie.

It's not that I can't follow the plot. The problem is that the whole story is symbolic fantasy - or what they called in the Middle ages 'allegory' (i.e., an allegory for the loss of Chinese inner power with the arrival of foreign colonialists). They only recent film that comes close to this in structure is from Japan, Toyko: the Last Metropolis. The most recent western film to approach this kind of story is, possibly, Terry Gilliam's ill-conceived Baron Munchhausen movie. But I liked the characters in those two movies; I don't like any of the characters in this one. Which may be the point, but not any reason to watch the movie again.

I should remark that these three movies are all extremely well-made, and all dishwater dull.

I'm afraid film is not a medium conducive to allegory. Film seems to work best when the characters remind us of people we've met - or are likely to meet - even if we don't like them much. When actors stand in for metaphors, they can't stand in for people. In which case, why should we care?