Xiao Li fei dao zi Fei dao wai chuan [The Legend Of The Flying Swordsman] (2000)

(On TV, April 2001) With a title like that, you might expect a martial-arts action-fest jam-packed with sword fights and wire-fu. Well, you’re in for a major disappointment, and that also stands for the film as a whole. The first forty minutes are concerned with, roughly, a wayward husband’s addiction to the fine products of the local bar. Then things get more extreme, with adultery, infanticide, a high body count and more ludicrousness. There is one sword fight, which is actually really good in a cartoonish sort of way, but it quickly passes and the rest of the film is an unabashed loss of time, a clash of genres and a mess of incoherent storytelling. Maybe it can be explained to me through obscure cultural references, but I prefer the simplest explanation; a bad film.