"THE SWORD is Tam's debut feature, a wuxia fantasy about the price of pursuing one's obsession and the concomitant comedown. A young swordsman Lee (Cheng) is hellbent to challenge the retired and reclusive Fa (Tien),the No.1 swordsman. Encountering Fa's feisty daughter Ying-Chi (Hsu),his sweetheart Yin (Chen),who is married to another ambitious swordsman Lin Wan (Chu),love triangles emerge as well as sinister schemes, but the sloppy plot (rarely a good sign when there many more than two persons are credited for the script) is the weakest link, kismet is contrived and incidents are spliced together just to form a tenuous story development. For instance, Lee's possession of an evil sword leaves one scratch one's head."

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.

This is a very early Hong Kong movie. It is about two swords, the winter star and the true sword. These swords were forged with hatred and those who are using the swords are cursed to be killed. This falls back to the ancient saying: he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.

The movie opens with a man who is searching for a sword master to challenge him to see if he is the best swordsperson. In his journey he meets a women named Pebble who is also a swordsperson. As it turns out it is her father that the man is seeking. An added twist to this movie has the man (who calls himself raindrop) find his childhood sweetheart, but she has married a rather nasty brute who wants both swords.

The Sword is an action movie. It has a number of reasonable sword fights, but it does not stand out to be a movie of high standard. This is great for an action movie but beyond that, it is nothing special.

About the fight scenes, despite the wire work and the special effects, it is clear in this movie that the actors really know kung fu. The fight shots tend toward middle range shots where you see the stance and the sword moves.

Instead of some many current films filled with cuts and close up that obscure the kung fu which the actors may not really know how to do anyway.

Also this movie is one of the few that deals with the idea that fighting and killing may not be as glorious and wonderful as it appears in concept.

All in a great movie with a very small cast that doesn't seem to impact the quality one bit.