Verdict
Summary
Brotherhood of Blades is a bit of a gem with some fabulous fight scenes and intriguing characters; definitely worth checking out.
Plot: Lu, Shen Lian, and Yichuan. Three sworn brothers, and deadly Jinyiwei – Secret Police of the Imperial Guard. The new Emperor’s first mission – find and annihilate the corrupt fugitive Eunuch Wei and his followers. But one mistake reveals the truth – the three men are pawns in a deadly game, unleashing a chain of secrets, conspiracies, and lethal consequences.
Review: Any time I get a movie from Well Go USA I get excited because it usually ends up being a rather awesome martial arts movie and today is no different. Brotherhood of Blades is a first rate character driven movie which also happens to be action packed.
Lu, Shen Lian, and Yichuan are all men of honour but one lie ends up destroying their lives.
The story is unpredictable and rarely goes 5 minutes without a fight breaking out. There is some fantastic choreography and the picture and sound quality on the Blu-ray is excellent.
The cast are all on top form but for me this movie belongs to Chen Chang who plays Shen Lian; he wants to free Zhou Miaotong from her life as a prostitute but she is in love with someone else. At first you think “well she’s just an ungrateful bitch and you should leave her ass there”; then we find out why she is cold towards Shen and we understand.
Every one of the characters has their own story and despite having plenty of action, the plot and characters have time to breathe.
Dong-xue Li makes Jin Yichuan a surprisingly layered character who was a thief that killed a man and pretended to be an Imperial Assassin; when he meets and falls for the doctor’s daughter you know it’s going to end in tragedy.
It’s funny I can’t really think of any major flaws to the film. There is the odd bit of CG but nothing overly distracting.
I’m not normally a huge fan of Wuxia movies but this has been the best one I’ve seen for quite a while with minimal wirework and the action is mostly quite real. The action highlight is when all three men are locked inside a building and have to face off against many adversaries and still manage to come out on top. Limbs are chopped off and blood flows like water and it’s filled with tension as well.
The score is quite reminiscent of The Dark Knight in places which was a bit odd but no one is really going to notice or care.
Overall, Brotherhood of Blades is a bit of a gem with some fabulous fight scenes and intriguing characters; definitely worth checking out.
