The Sword

An ambitious swordsman looking to bolster his reputation hunts for an older master to defeat in a duel. On his quest, he gets embroiled with a young woman chased by bandits (no slouch with a sword herself), his childhood sweetheart (unhappily married into wealth), and a cursed, evil sword. Patrick Tam’s iconoclastic convictions are already apparent in this feature debut: “Martial arts films give an impression of being conventional; I wanted to push the envelope in visual experiment.” The fight choreography is fluid and fast, and the film’s expressive use of color would become one of Tam’s signatures.