The movie is about a self taught highly skilled assassin swordsman who is haunted by the destructive impact his deadly talents have, and a challenger who aims to take his place at all costs.
Despite the best efforts of Derek Yee and Tsui Hark, Sword Master is a bloated action film with mediocre visuals and a cast that takes itself far more seriously than everyone else will.
Sword Master will hypnotise viewers new to the genre who are easily distracted by shiny things, and Yiyan Jiang's performance is almost worth the price of admission on it own, but martial arts aficionados are likely to be disappointed.
For the most part this is a clunky hodgepodge of old-fashioned warrior tropes, awkward humor, five-alarm melodrama and CGI-dependent 21st century action filmmaking ...
