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Saw Qi jain (Seven Swords) (Hark Tsui) at the Isabel Bader theatre or something, on the University Of Toronto campus. It wasn’t the first showing of the film at the festival so nobody was there to introduce it, except for some volunteer. Anyway, the movie was kinda cool, but a bit hard to follow - perhaps because I don’t speak Chinese, and there was a lot of reference to myths and other things that would most likely be common knowledge to a native Chinese viewer.

I was attracted to this film because I like martial arts epics, and also because Tsui is pretty well known for directing a bunch of the “Once Upon A Time In China” films. Those are also the films that helped make Jet Li an internation superstar. Also, the film had tons of press from screenings in Asia and Europe, and as far as genre is concerned, it helped us to broaden our film picks.

Great acting (I think), great fight sequences. It was long; including, for example, a ten-minute scene where the guy lets his horse go. I mean, just let it go! Do we really need mutli-angle shots, sweeping cinematography, slow-mo galloping and teary waves (the man was waving, not the horse)? Anyway, I digress. Actually, I’m not digressing. There were some really long and boring scenes and I had to fight to stay awake for some of them. I mean, I ate TWO chocolate bars to try to get a sugar rush (that’s my justification).

The actions sequences were cool but I had some trouble following who was who. I figured that there would be seven warriors or whatever, but I was never too sure on where exactly they came from - they appeared to jump out of a magic mountain after a meteor came crashing down on it. I dunno, sometimes these Chinese films use mythical and literal characters in such a way that I don’t know what is what.

So, it was a pretty cool film, but it was no Crouching Tiger or House Of Flying Daggers.