SAKRA is Donnie Yen’s 2023 passion project, which he stars in and co-directed (with Kam Ka-Wai, second assistant director of IP MAN 1 and 2). It’s a wuxia story based on a famous novel with the tough-sounding title Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils by Jin Yong.

Yen stars as Qiao Feng, an orphan raised by a couple in the Song Empire. He grows up to become the leader of the powerful Beggar Gang, whose legendary badassness is introduced in one of those classic scenes where somebody is being an asshole in public and our guy is quietly listening for a while and then gets inolved (see also: Blue Eye Samurai). A monk (Tsui Siu-Ming, KUNG FU KILLER) comes to this restaurant dragging a cage he says contains an “unruly” person he’s going to sacrifice, and Qiao Feng is sitting at a table on the balcony of a whole different establishment across the way when he starts loudly talking shit without even looking at him. The monk is like “What the fuck – is that guy talking to me?”

Qiao throws chopsticks to remove a tarp from the cage, leaps across the courtyard, does a flip and lands in a chair at the monk’s table, still chewing his food. They have one of those acting-calm-while-being-threatening conversations, until the monk’s thugs attack and Qiao Feng fights them off without initially getting up out of his chair.

This fight establishes the idea that Qiao Feng stands for fierce morality, including when that defies religious dogma. It also sets up the level of reality at play here: the monk (who warned him not to “play with fire”) can shoot flames from his hands, Qiao has a powerful energy blast move called “Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms,” also people can glide, run up walls, kick almost any size of object through the air, easily smash through floors and walls like they’re flying Kool Aid Men – the good stuff. Also there’s a part where the monk asks if Qiao’s weapon is a “dog beating staff” and he says, “It’s used on jerks.”

Despite having a fun time beating that particular jerk, Qiao has a very bad day. A meeting of the Beggar Gang is called to accuse him of murder and of being a Khitan, the rivals of the Song Empire. He didn’t do the murder, but has no idea about the Khitan thing, knowing nothing about his biological parents. There’s some weird rule where the elders are gonna stab themselves with special daggers as punishment for his sins, but he very honorably stabs himself instead and rides off to investigate his origins.

That’s not the end of the bad day! He goes to ask his adoptive parents if the rumors are true, only to find they’ve just been stabbed to death, and two guys walk in on him and assume he did it. Next he sneaks into the Shaolin Temple to ask his old teacher about his origins, and that guy falls over dead, so suddenly he’s being falsely accused of four murders. In the process of escaping, a young monk is injured (and revealed to be a woman in disguise – long hair under bald cap and everything!) and Qiao blames himself, so he carries her off to safety.

I gotta say, I love this guy just for how nimble he is about leaping across rooftops. When you wake up in the morning, do you ever have trouble getting going? This guy doesn’t. His eyes pop open, like 2 seconds later he’s flying away like a fuckin rocket, and coming right back with stolen steam buns for breakfast. I’m sure he could get coffee or donuts or whatever you want. Great guy to have around.

The woman’s name is Azhu. She’s the servant of a rich family, also seeking her origins, and forced to steal a manuscript from the Shaolin Temple. Qiao believes only Physician Xue (Cheung-Yan Yuen, TAI CHI MASTER) can heal her injuries, but to find him he has to walk into a huge meeting where upwards of 100 warriors were just chanting “Kill Qiao Feng! Kill the traitor!”

“Qiao Feng, how dare you come to the You brothers’ Heroes’ Gathering Manor! What a coincidence. We were discussing how to root out scum like you.”

When Physician Xue looks at Azhu he says, “All healers ought to have healing hands and kind hearts. I won’t turn away anyone who seeks medical help… except for anyone brought by you!”

This is only like halfway through the movie, but it has this incredible scene where he agrees to fight all of these “Heroes.” He says some of them used to be his brothers but it’s okay if they want to fight him to the death. So they all start toasting. They seem sad and nostalgic as they list all the times he saved their lives and what they admire about him and stuff. And the music gets more and more emotional, like they’re all gonna hug at the end of it, but Qiao says, “After drinking this wine, our relationship will end here. In the next life I hope we can still be good brothers.”

By the way, two notes about these toasts. One, the Song brothers can not be happy about how many of their bowls get smashed for this ritual. Two, it seems unfair that Qiao toasts over and over and chugs a big jug for the last one while everybody else just drinks one small bowl. He’s not complaining though, and drinks from another jug during the fight.

I love the melodrama, but I also like how Yen leavens it with a perfect joke. There’s this random bandit we saw on the road earlier bragging to his underlings how if he ever saw Qiao Feng he’d kick his ass because “in terms of kung fu, I’m a match for him.” Now his men are like “What are you waiting for? This is your chance!” so he’s forced to step out there to join the challenge. Qiao is like “Who the fuck are you?” and gives him the most devastating kick to the head, just slamming him face-first through a wooden cart and into the ground.

The beginning of the fight takes place on top of the huge Heroes’ Gathering table, as the Heroes attack him many at a time, and he completely destroys most of them with one or two sledge-hammer-like kicks. I love the shot where he smashes a guy through the table, and the camera follows him down to the under section and pans across as another guy and another guy and another guy crash through to the ground.

In this fight Qiao fucks up more motherfuckers than almost anybody has ever fucked up, knocking them into each other like bowling pins, slashing necks with a sword, doing a Shao Khan Shang Tsung fatality move on four elders at once, yanking their souls out and then pushing them through a window. He force pushes the blood out of a guy, leaps up and in mid-air snaps a spear over his knee so he can throw both halves and impale two guys before his feet touch the ground.

Even seeing all this, Azhu is worried they’re gonna get him. She’s right to be worried – Physician Xue stabs Qiao in his Qi Hui acupoint (you now how it is) so he can’t use his powers, including the Eighteen Subduing Dragons Palm. (Man, I’m gonna file a complaint against that doctor, I do not think he behaves ethically.) But Qiao keeps fighting in heroically silent slow motion until the ceiling collapses on all of them as a mysterious cloaked figure in the rafters zoinks him away on a rope. The mystery man brings him to a cave, tries to get him to identify as Khitan, and flies away without revealing his identity.

When Qiao and Azhu reunite they realize they’re in love and want to raise sheep together, and the plot gets crazier as various schemes and scandals are revealed. Assassinations, secret daughters, a mysterious “Lead Brother,” vengeance against the man he thinks killed his parents, more disguises and horrible tragedy. In the last 20 minutes suddenly there’s a new badass lady character, Azhu’s sister Azi (Cya Liu, LIMBO), who seems cool but is kind of a psycho (she burns Lady Ma’s face off with acid powder). She also plays a great trick where she fires an arrow at a villain who catches it, but the side of the arrow poisons his hand.

You get to see hundreds of arrows are fired, twirling wind powers, several innocent horses getting caught up in this business.

There’s a spectacular sword duel, more rooftop running, more magic energy battles. When Qiao almost dies he remembers a childhood discussion of Buddhist philosophy with his Sifu and says, “I’m not a hero, I’m just an ordinary person who holds fast to the right path.” But then he flies through the air firing off a fusillade of punches that alternately sound like roaring dinosaurs and thunderclaps, pushing a guy so hard he knocks over a building, which in my opinion is not very ordinary. It would be dangerous if ordinary persons were going around doing that shit.

I should mention that the movie ends on an absolutely befuddling note. SPOILERS. In a mid-credits scene, the seemingly dead villain Murong Fu (Wu Yue, PARADOX, THE BRINK, IP MAN 4) is revived by his long lost, openly super-villainous father Murong Bo (Ray Lui, FIRESTORM). Then it’s revealed that Qiao Feng’s biological father Qiao Yuanshan (Donnie Yen with wrinkly hands and grey hairs) is still alive, was the one who killed Qiao Feng’s adoptive parents and his Sifu, and also the one who rescued him after the Heroes Gathering fight, and I guess is teaming up with Murong Bo for… something? Up to this point it seemed like a normal self-contained tale, but suddenly it’s part of a cinematic universe, I guess?

We’ll see. Other than that SAKRA is a good example of modern wuxia – high production value, sincere preachiness, old Donnie wearing long hair wigs and falling in love with a young woman, a main theme that sounds like a spaghetti western, and a bunch of very good fights. If you’ve seen any of the RUROUNI KENSHIN movies you’ll recognize this fast, complex, joyously cartoonish style of action, because Yen is credited as action director alongside his long time collaborator Kenji Tanigaki (who did those movies, and SNAKE EYES). The choreographers are Yan Hua (KILL ZONE) and Yu Kang (RAGING FIRE).

After seeing SAKRA I also watched THE PRINCESS BLADE, a movie from 2001 that was a big deal at the time for people into these sorts of things. It’s a Japanese production, but they somehow convinced Yen to come be the action director, and I believe that’s how he met Tanigaki. The fights are great, Yumiko Shaku (GODZILLA TOKYO S.O.S.) is cool in the title role, and it has the irresistible hook of transplanting a samurai story to a post-apocalyptic world. Unfortunately I think the story is too weak to find it very compelling in the long stretches between action scenes, which is especially a shame since it’s supposedly based on the great Kazuo Koike (Lone Wolf and Cub)’s manga Lady Snowblood. Admittedly I only know the movie of that one, but I see only faint, superficial connections between the two. In LADY SNOWBLOOD, Oyuki’s mother was imprisoned for murdering one of four bandits who raped her and killed her family, so she conceives her while in jail and has her raised to be a killer and avenge the other three. In THE PRINCESS BLADE she’s just the heir to a royal bloodline. That’s like 1% as cool. To be generous.

But the choreography is fun and we got an important decades-long international partnership out of it. THE PRINCESS BLADE is on DVD, SAKRA is on Hi-Yah! and on DVD and blu-ray. (Try to disregard the shitty cover.)