Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman (2002)
I may have mentioned it at some point, but I’ve been watching a lot of a “tv” show that follows a character from some Detective Dee movies I watched a while back and really enjoyed. You can actually find those reviews on here somewhere, if memory serves me right. Well, anyways, what that means for tonight is I’ve been on a big Chinese action kick, so when I see something talking about a sword fighter who can’t see in the title, obviously I’m going to pick it to watch. So low and behold, here we are! We’ve heard plenty of a blind Japanese swordsman, but tonight we swim over to China to check out Eye for an Eye.
Technically it also includes the The Blind Swordsman in the copy I watched on Amazon for this review, but IMDB is trying to tell me that it isn’t there and I don’t know Chinese enough despite consuming a bunch of their movies in recent years to remotely know any of it, let alone if the title translates over enough. Anyways, subtitles in hand, our story here is one of justice - perhaps tinged a bit with revenge - and one that’s honestly pretty easy to follow even if there wasn’t words being shown and spoken. Our main character is effectively a bounty hunter, and a darn good one before you even take into the account he does it all without his sight. On his way to turn in a bounty, he ends up being invited to a wedding by a friendly bride so he can enjoy some wine - and enjoy some wine he does as he passes out over by his horse. When he wakes up, the brides family is dead and she’s in rough shape. Seems some bad characters showed and and did the old “rape and murder” that bad guys were all too fond of back in the day. He takes her along to the next city after things don’t work out in the current one, but largely stays uninvolved until her seeking justice at the local “temple” (it’s at this point that my consumption of the Dee series has me wondering if they meant the local magistrates office) leads to her being tortured by the same folks that caused the mess and are apparently running the whole shindig underground mafia style.He doesn’t take kindly to this, and our action comes forth with exploding potential.
Characters aren’t super elaborate feeling here. I think this might have the potential to bug folks looking for something super deep, but for the folks like me who got sucked in because of the promise of sword fights it won’t be too much a bother. The characters we are supposed to like are presented as good folks - happy going and kind, or at least just in their actions and choices. The ones we aren’t meant to like - well, I mean, I already had to lay out how the wedding went once, so it’s rather obvious we went the quick path of “actions speak louder than words” for them. There is some level of gang-style and cover-up logic to the core of the baddies initial actions, but some of it there just never could be an acceptable answer for so I wouldn’t be surprised to know it’s just their to be the quick and easy equivalent to the villain killing a dog or something - quick and visceral adding to the ‘needs to get dead” list.
The actors do a pretty good job, even though the language barrier prevents me from actually understanding whats being said and if the delivery of it is appropriate. That said, you can get the general mood for what is going on by looking at a character and how the actor is presenting them, so body language does a wonderful job of getting things across. .The folks involved in the action scenes do a spectacular job of selling things hurting and accomplishing some of the fancy moves going on though, so even with me missing that part of the acting puzzle that is the language, I found it to be more than suitably handled by those involved.
Way to start the movie off.
Although I kind of gave it a way a little bit there, the action scenes in this movie are great. Plenty of different little tricks are used to keep it visually exciting - no two fights feel like they are taking place the same way. One is in the rain, one has snow, some are clear and bright, and some are dark and quick. The fights themselves also play with this - such as when the main uses his drink to give a quick and quiet foe a bit of a smell to make him easier to follow. All the fights are pretty brutal, and although it’s not overly graphic about it’s quality presented (we don’t have any guts flopping out or anything), we do still get the occasional bone and the likes flipping out to further sell just how violent the actions are without assaulting our eyes. I came in to this movie for some martial arts and sword action, and it delivered it on a warmed silver platter with a smile. If that’s your main reason to watch the movie, you should come out pretty satisfied as well.
Costumes get to have fun as well, as we get plenty of period bits. We do get some pretty fancy duds on a few of the characters, but we also get a villain that looks like a bad guy out of an anime, as well as some more time-appropriate service gear with that shoulder armor style that I’ve been noticing more and more as I’ve consumed more of these period movies. I do think to myself sometimes how similar the movies (particularly period ones with or without that bit of fantasy) feel between these and the Japanese ones I’ve watched in the past, and I wonder how often I’ve mistaken one countries movies for the others when I look back at some of them. I think the biggest give-away would be the architecture at this point, but either way between the setting and the costumes, mesh it in with the action you get plenty enough to check out without it all feeling samey and ho-hum.
Audio is there - some characters have more variation and liveliness to their voice lines than others, but being so far removed from all the implications and nuances of the place and it’s people’s I really can’t speak towards it more than I can hear them and it’s not all monotone. Perhaps sometimes when someone does have less emotional variation to their lines it’s way more appropriate, but overall it sounded fine to me anyways. Some of the music in the background almost sounded like a western movie towards the beginning, and then outside of that there’s a bunch of more modern feel to it without being over-blown or radio-play stuff. Still feels a bit more new than someone playing a zither, but can I also point out that you didn’t pull one past me movie. That’s the Tetris theme, regardless of how you may have changed the speed or instrument. Beyond that, I’d argue that this one doesn’t feel it’s the best choice out there for the thinking type folks - I’m sure they could find things in there about following the heart and justice, but it never really feels to me like this one is really meant to do much more then set up the character to be absolutely baller (which he was) and give us a fun time. Given it’s runtime of hardly over an hour, I’d say it did that all without unnecessary padding - even if that does mean that deeper and more meaningful stuff won’t happen nearly as often when you can spend an extra 20 minutes with characters chewing the scenes to talk about corruption or whatnot.
Happiest to worst wedding in a flash.
From an action standpoint, I’d say this is certainly worth checking out considering it was free on Amazon at the time I watched it. The action is solid, the movie is shot pretty good and the story is good enough at it’s basic boil-point that you want things to play out how they are playing out without making it overly elaborate. Bad things happen to good people because bad people are bad, and bad people need to pay the blind piper because of it. It’s the kind of thing that could easily be serialized out into a franchise in a sort of monster of the week type of movie run, which I wouldn’t be surprised as to if it was already happening considering while looking for the box art image I found a picture of an “Eye for an Eye 2” that looked a bit like it might be lifting some ideas from the various “assassin takes in a young person, probably to get revenge for them” kind of deals. After the action in this one though, I’d watch it when it comes out if I notice for sure.