Official Synopsis
Qinglong (action icon Donnie Yen) is a legendary royal guard-trained in a clandestine form of combat from childhood in order to devote his life and lethal prowess to the service of the Emperor. When the Imperial Court is taken over by an evil traitor, Jia (Law Kar-Ying), and betrayal lurks at every corner, Qinglong finds himself hunted by those he once trusted. Now as the most wanted man in the land, he must seek out and rally the loyalists to rise against Jia and restore the Emperor to his rightful place!
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Boy, this one was fun.
The film starts of as it should with a backstory explaining our tragic hero Qinglong, who was forced as an orphan to kill other orphans in a locked room. Only the remaining orphan would survive and become a Jinyiwei, an imperial military secret police to the emperor. On top of this, the backstory also explains the 14 blades that the Jinyiwei carry with them and what each blade means. All of this information is given within a 2-3 minute period of the opening. Quite a lot of heavy stuff at the beginning of an action film.
The great thing about this backstory is that it gets all the details out of the way in a short amount of time, so that the story can carry on without much stop and go. Normally, a technique like this in a film would just absolutely annoy me, as I would want gradual character development throughout a film that builds up into something of substance. For an action film, that rule can be bent (nay, broken). It’s an action film, the less beef, the better.
Anyway, backstory aside, the film makes Qinglong’s plight pretty obvious and direct from the get-go. When Jai (evil traitor) tries to overthrow the current emperor and steal away his seal, Qinglong is set on a one-way mission to reacquire it — no matter the cost. Needing transportation to another town, to hide his identity, as the whole damn country is after him, Qinglong hires a band of travelers to accompany him to the seal. Of course, not all is easy, as Jai has forces countering Qinglong’s every move.
It’s a pretty straightforward set of action events at the beginning of the movie. It’s not slow, it keeps going from fight to fight and you begin to understand Qinglong’s undying devotion to the good emperor. Going back to the backstory, his character was trained to fight for his emperor, do his best to serve the emperor’s needs and to not accept failure as a possibility — if he fails, he dies. His one-track action persona isn’t that difficult to understand and doesn’t need that much depth to appreciate. Again, that backstory sets all of this up and doesn’t require the viewer to process anything overly complicated to understand Qinglong’s motivation. I love that simplicity about it because, as I’ve stated multiple times, it’s an action film! This character is hellbent on honoring his duty to the emperor, and it’s intense to watch unfold. Nothing could stop this action train, right?
Sadly, as modern martial arts films go, the attempt to attach a dramatic love story to it (not the action type) stifles the action along the way.
With the band of travelers is a single daughter named Qiao Hua (Wei Zhao — see Shaolin Soccer for details), who is kidnapped by Qinglong once the travelers find out they are transporting a wanted man. The relationship between Qinglong and Qiao starts off rough, as it should (kidnapping isn’t a romantic thing), and progressively starts bringing the two characters closer and closer. While the relationship is somewhat entertaining in the drama department of this film, it honestly only adds just a tad of drama and regretfully slows down the action. From what we know of Qinglong up to this point, the relationship is destined to go nowhere and it actually hits a wall somewhere in the middle of the film. I applaud the attempt of bringing both characters together, but it’s just a shallow build, and ultimately a waste of screen time. If the story moves Qinglong out of his unyielding quest to recover the seal and refocuses his attention to love, it destroys everything built up about Qinglong. You can’t have that because it kills his quest. At best, Qiao is merely a distraction and gets the movie off track unnecessarily. No offense to Wei Zhao at all for this, as she does a fantastic job with Qiao. Her character is simply misplaced and useless in the grand scheme of 14 Blades.
Anyway, the film moves forward with the love story dragging behind, still relying on action to pull it through. It does its best to keep everyone out of Qinglong’s plight, as minor characters appear here and there, such as Judge, who is an honorable thief helping to get Qinglong to the seal. Judge is a throwaway character that isn’t in the movie long enough to understand or care about, but keeps the action oriented stuff interesting to keep the film’s flow going. He’s interesting, deserves a film of his own and adds some flavor when the film is dragging.
Having said that, one character in the movie that isn’t a throwaway, although I would have liked to know more about her, is the antagonist Tuo Tuo (played by Kate Tsui). She is a complete badass and makes for a stupendous and vicious last fight for our hero, Qinglong. I didn’t catch the details about her past, but the way she carries herself in the film makes you want to know everything. Deadly with a whip and relentless during a fight, she was fun and made the action intensify to its zenith at the end. She almost redeems the action film, as much as she redeems Qinglong.
Overall, the movie didn’t really surprise me with delivery. There was plenty of action to enjoy, and not too much of the modern martial arts Crouching Tiger crap (yes, I said that) that you get with these types of movies. It was violent action that looked cool, felt cool and was cool. If they had left out the love story, it would have been even better. They didn’t, so the film isn’t perfect. 14 Blades is entertaining, though, and at the very least delivers what it promises.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film, it’s good, but not great. The transfer to HD brought with it a lot of graininess in the background. While there aren’t any hits/artifacts in the transfer, the grainy video in some of the lighter scenes sadly shines through. I tried this out on three different televisions here at DC and all of them came up with the same issue. It really only rears its head in white/gray areas of the picture, but it’s obvious when it does show up. Still, though, the Blu-ray is far better than what you would get with a DVD. There isn’t any color banding, which is a blessing. It does have some great moments visually, especially during the last fight in the film. If you want to get this movie, get it on Blu-ray. That’s your best bet.
In the special features department it comes up empty. I wish it had a featurette or something of that kind.