BLADES OF THE GUARDIANS is the new movie that’s gonna make me even more confused when I’m trying to remember which OF THE GUARDIANS movie is the owl one and which is the Jack Frost/Easter Bunny one. But I’m willing to face that challenge in exchange for a new movie directed by the now 80-year-old legend of martial arts choreography Yuen Woo-ping. (Holy shit, MASTER Z: THE IP MAN LEGACY was almost 8 years ago?)

(Note: the full on screen title is BLADES OF THE GUARDIANS: WIND RISES IN THE DESERT. Man, I love movies!)

Wu Jing (LEGENDARY ASSASSIN, KILL ZONE 2, WOLF WARRIOR 2) stars as Dao Ma, a bounty hunter and bodyguard for hire who’s also the second most wanted fugitive in the empire. I actually didn’t recognize him for a second because he has long hair and looks a little older and smaller than I think of him as. In a good way, though. He kinda looks like Vampire Hunter D with his all black outfit and wide brimmed hat. He travels with his young nephew Xiao Qi, but it’s not like LONE WOLF AND CUB because he tries to cover the kid’s eyes when there’s violence.

It will turn out he has a classic action hero backstory: once part of an elite military force called the Left Valiant Cavalry, he refused orders and rescued his nephew from execution. Later there’s even a Casey Ryback moment where he fights a former comrade who tells him he should come back and he says they’re both puppets of powerful people.

He’s not interested in being part of the system again. Governor Chang tries to recruit him to train the troops, even tries to give him a really fancy sword (with equally fancy sheath) to butter him up. I like how Dao Ma doesn’t think something so beautiful should be used to kill people. Anyway the governor is played by Jet Li, who I also didn’t recognize until I heard his voice. They did a good job of making him more grizzled than we know Jet Li is even now. This is a small part, billed as a “special performance,” but it’s nice to see him – the last time he was on screen was as the emperor in the live action MULAN in 2020, and that was filmed in 2018.

Turning down the gig leads to harassment and persecution, Dao Ma fights back, ends up even more wanted by The Man, and he hides out in Mojia Village, which is on top of a plateau and is guarded by lots of cool warriors, many of them women. (Are those the guardians? I don’t think so. They mostly use arrows.)

In return for this protection his chieftain friend Lao Mo (Tony Leung Ka-fai, A BETTER TOMORROW 3, SHE SHOOTS STRAIGHT, THROW DOWN, LEGENDS OF THE CONDOR HEROES: THE GALLANTS) convinces him to take a risky but righteous mission escorting the only guy more wanted than him, rebel leader Zhishilang (Sun Yizhou, LOVE APARTMENT), across the Gobi desert to the safety of Chang’an. Zhishilang is an odd character: the top of his face is always covered with a kabuki-like mask, the bottom part painted to match the mask. He doesn’t seem to be a warrior. He’s a poet and likes to give people flowers as a symbol because he calls his revolution the “Flower Rebellion.”

My favorite character is Lao Mo’s daughter Ayuya (Yue opera actress Chen Lijun), a talented archer with a cool headband, who insists on coming along. And soon they cross paths with a bounty hunter who calls himself “Jade-Faced Ghost” (Yu Shi, CREATION OF THE GODS), who has a burn across one eye and long silver-ish hair like an anime character. He’s transporting a chained up bounty named Yan Ziniang (Li Ynxiao) in a horse-drawn carriage, who also becomes one of the main characters as the two parties find themselves reluctantly traveling together.

There are many different threats along the way: Chang’s troops, various bounty hunters, Dao Ma’s former brother in arms Di Ting (Nicholas Tse, BODYGUARDS AND ASSASSINS), potential betrayal from the Jade-Faced Ghost. Worst of all it turns out there’s this prick named He Yixuan (Ci Sha, THE SHADOW’S EDGE), the son of the Khan of some other tribe affiliated with Mojia Village, who has had a crush on Ayuya since they were kids and insists he’s marrying her even though she’s not interested. He also wants to be the Khan himself, so he kidnaps Ayuya and leads his troops in attacking the village. (Captivity does keep Ayuya out of the climactic battle, an action pet peeve of mine, but at least she enacts the brutal vengeance herself when she gets loose.)

There are some sturdy supporting players, including Xing Yu (KOWLOON WALLED CITY, STRIKING RESCUE) and Rongguang Yu (the IRON MONKEY himself). I knew Max Zhang (MASTER Z himself, plus KILL ZONE 2, THE BRINK, ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS, THE INVINCIBLE DRAGON) was in it, but I should warn other Z-heads that it’s a small role. He does at least get the badass moniker Two-headed Snake.

I’ve seen many people praise the old school wuxia-ness of BLADES OF THE GUARDIANS, and I think that’s accurate, especially because it doesn’t have the colorful digital look of Yuen’s other 21st century fantasies TRUE LEGEND, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON: SWORD OF DESTINY or especially THE THOUSAND FACES OF DUNJIA. A big part of that is just that the FX technology has improved, but it’s also (in extremely relative terms) a more grounded fantasy world without monsters or magic, so they’re hiding the computer stuff instead of showcasing it. But there’s still a ton of spectacle. So many horses, so many warriors, so many different factions with different styles of costumes, different weapons. The good shit.

I admire that despite setting it primarily in a desert Yuen manages to stage fights with distinct looks and elements. Literally: there are fights in fire, in water (including a flashback with snow), a whole lot of air, and obviously earth (in the form of sand). There’s a very cool fight in an oil field at night – it ends when one fighter falls into the oil and the other holds a torch next to him. Pretty definitive.

Let me tell you something I think is beautiful. Yuen Woo-ping and George Miller were both born in 1945, and they started directing movies within a year of each other (1978 for SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW, 1979 for MAD MAX). By the great generosity of fate they’re both still creating masterworks, and BLADES OF THE GUARDIANS contains strong evidence that Master Yuen saw Miller’s MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and loved it as much we did. I first thought that just seeing his great drone shots trailing after convoys of horses tearing through the desert, but then there’s this knockout sequence where they lead their pursuers right into a huge sandstorm. There are what might be direct nods to Miller’s version of the same idea, but it transcends mere homage or imitation with the novel sight of a kung fu battle in gale force winds. We know this isn’t real, but it doesn’t look like green screen, they are definitely fighting while being blasted with powerful air, and the dark, stormy atmosphere (however enhanced it may be) looks beautiful.

Because the title reminds me of the last big Chinese blockbuster I saw in a theater, Tsui Hark’s LEGENDS OF THE CONDOR HEROES: THE GALLANTS, I assumed this was another one based on very old and complicated source material. It’s actually from a manhua (Chinese comic) published in 2015, which has also had an animated series. I get the feeling it’s a fairly straight forward adaptation of one story, but I admit I still found some of it a little challenging to follow. There’s also that inkling that because big budget Chinese movies have to be approved by the government there might be some themes in here that I wouldn’t really like if I had the cultural/historical context to pick up on them. Or maybe I’m being paranoid there. Either way, I’m perfectly comfortable having my own not-intended reading of the story that I can believe in.

So here’s my interpretation. It’s a movie about a pluralistic society. Mojia Village seems pretty culturally diverse, they even have a badass African guy and (I believe) a European, Jewish guy (admittedly a merchant, maybe that falls into a stereotype). They have strong women and reject arranged marriage. They support the Flower Revolution in the strongest way possible. And our band of heroes are non-conformists. We have our bounty hunter who dresses in all black. Our long hair pretty boy. And whatever the cultural context may be, Zhishilang is someone unconfined by the ideas of gender most people live by. With his mask and face paint you could think of him as something like a drag queen. Unless you’d rather go juggalo. But he’s clearly doing his thing.

These are people who think for themselves, who live as they want to, who are very good at what they do (especially kung fu), they work together, they build friendships, they fight for what they believe in. Their cause is just, their task is difficult, but the wind is at their backs, and wind rises in the desert.

Yuen has a little cameo in the movie, a scene that shows up as an outtake in the end credits, and it’s about old guys (I don’t know who the other two are, but I’m sure they’re icons) passing the torch to the youth. Even just from the astonishing feats of action filmmaking in this one late movie you can see it’s gonna be a daunting task for someone else to carry on that tradition and do it justice. But I’m so very grateful for all the examples Yuen has given them over the years.