how many years has tsui hark been plodding along? and still he turns in this solid effort while the film industry in HK are still going down hill at the box offices.

yet he goes out to the XinJiang wilderness and do this 7 swords - an ensemble cast from an Chinese paper pop wuxia column written in the 50s. for what you have to wonder? fame... fortune ..love of the movies? could be .. or maybe more.

this film is meticulous, well told, well styled, with an interesting choice in action director to boot: the old timer, Lau Kar-Leung, who is not a specialist in sword play. why again? meticulous in the constant mix of medium and close-ups -- his style, and washes these with occasional wides. here he adds the constant flash-backs. meticulous in color control, lighting, the heat of the battle, the heart of the story.

His movies are kind of a Chinese comic book; or the Chinese science fiction. it is arguably for the Chinese spirit, documents upon documents of the Chinese mind set, the hopes and dreams in the culture (because of suppressions?),ideals and philosophies and sustainment of what maybe to him -- that are Chinese? and yet universal at the same time? i'm reaching sure. but i'm Chinese after all.

I am a sound guy and always feel that audio plays a big part in the success of a film. Look at Braveheart or Lord of the Rings or Moulin Rouge.

Seven Swords soundtrack is composed by Kenji Kawai. A talented Japanese that has composed music for Japanese Anime: Ranma ½, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Ghost in the Shell, Blue Seed, Patlabor 2 & 3, Gunparade March, etc and movies for The Ringu, The Ringu 2, Dark Water, Princess Blade, etc.

Kenji Kawai is one of the top Japanese music composer, together with the ranks of Yoko Kanno, Joe Hisaishi, Nobuo Uematsu (godfather of Final Fantasy I to XII music).

I won't comment too much on Seven Swords story itself because I did not read the novel written by Liang Yu-Shen. It will be unfair to criticize how accurate or inaccurate Tsui Hark based his movie on. Did Donnie Yen's character 'Chu Zhaonan' and the mysterious girl spoke Korean in the original novel? Or it is Tsui Hark's idea to add some Korean flavor, hoping to break into the Korean market?

I do want to say that the fighting scenes are too tightly edited. Too many different camera angle cuts during a single fight scenes make my eyes sore. I believe the quick cuts was edited to make the characters look more skilled and smooth because in actual filming, they have difficulties handling the heavy swords or stunts.

Mao points: 7/10

With this film, the Asians seem to have reclaimed the "Seven Samurai" plot line but here the seven are somewhat haphazardly chosen (since the skill lies not with the person itself but the particular sword he or she brandishes, hence the title). However, by concentrating on the romantic complications in which a few of the main characters become embroiled, some of the warriors are kept too much in the background…but the leader of the seven is as unassuming as Takashi Shimura had been in SEVEN SAMURAI (1954),while the chief villain is flamboyantly played in the manner of Eli Wallach from THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)! There is no denying the fact that its mainstay are the epic scope of the production itself (highlighting the meticulous period detail) and the elaborate action sequences which, thankfully, are rarely implausible - as most actioners from Asia (even the more critically lauded ones) tended to be of late! Apparently, the film (which runs for more than 2½ hours) was trimmed down from an even longer version; though the IMDb doesn't mention this, a Maltese friend of mine who's a veritable Asian-film nut assured me of it…and, in fact, the narrative did feel kind of choppy to me!