One of a long series of Chor Yuen films adapted from the novels of Gu Long Murder Plot features a charismatic cast anchored by the always strong David Chiang, sumptuous production design and cinematography and martial arts scenes o'plenty. Unfortunately it also features a very convoluted plot line that bears every mark of having been compressed down from a much larger source. Which, of course, it was.
David Chiang stars as Shen Lang, a lone wanderer who has walked away from his fiance and a successful business career to pursue a mass murdering martial artist known only as The Happy King. Some fifteen years before The Happy King masterminded a mass battle that killed off more than nine hundred martial arts masters and has been living in the shadows ever since, a figure known only by reputation but who is rumored to have mastered many martial arts techniques believed to have died out long before. The masters of the six dominant martial arts schools are also in pursuit of the King but he is a master of deception and subterfuge and the trail is a difficult one that leads - among other places - through abandoned graveyards and rumored treasure troves and leaves all who pursue him either dead or mysteriously vanished. Throw mass poisonings, a jilted fiance, unlikely alliances, booby trapped tombs and more, more, more into the mix and you begin to get an idea of what you're getting into. There's so much crammed in to Murder Plot that it seldom has the time to take a breath.
Chiang, for his part, is a charismatic lead who relies on a certain understated elegance for his performances. Not as flashy as many of his contemporaries Chiang has never received the same amount of attention as the other leading men of his era but it seems likely that were he working now he'd be landing the sorts of roles customarily offered to (Little) Tony Leung. Chiang's martial arts skills are certainly solid enough but his primary draw is his smooth demeanor, a sort of ironic detachment that keeps him separate from the mass struggle around him. He's good enough that he could settle all of the martial arts infighting and he knows that he's good enough but he simply doesn't care to.
Though obviously shot on the Shaw lot director Yuen frames, lights and shoots his film in unusual ways, giving it a dark and slightly eerie look that suits the supernatural mystery element well. He gives the film a very distinctive look, which is no easy feat when using the same standing sets used by scores of other films of the time. He obviously knows and loves the source material - hence the constant returning to Gu Long's writings - but is a little bit hampered by them here. Murder Plot has so much ground to cover that more than once Yuen has to resort to narrative cheats as obvious as simply having one character explain all of the back story to another character to get the audience up to speed or, when time doesn't permit that, simply jumping to the next sequence with no explanation whatsoever, obviously hoping that the audience will have read the novel, too, and therefore be able to follow what's happening and why. Which may well have worked in the Hong Kong of the time but works significantly less well with white boys like me in 2007 who are left scratching their heads with disturbing regularity.
The freshly remastered Celestial Pictures release is, once again, looking good. The picture is bright and clear, the print completely free of any damage or defect, the transfer in its proper aspect ratio and the English subtitles clear and easy to follow. Bonus features include a quartet of Shaw Brothers trailers - also remastered - an image gallery and background info on the film and performers.
