THE BUTCHER, THE CHEF & THE SWORDSMAN (Dao jiàn xiào)
Director: Wuershan
Writers: An Changhe , Zhang Jiajia
Stars: Masanobu Andô, You Benchang and Liu Xiaoye
“The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman,” a dizzying period pop extravaganza from China, explodes with brio. Directed by Wuershan, a veteran of commercials who is making his feature debut, the film ricochets in a breakneck delirium from ham-fisted comedy to solemn revenge drama to antic martial-arts thriller, a crazy quilt of energy and style.
Partly midwifed by the director-producer Doug Liman, the movie comprises three interlocking stories linked to a vice. Ignorance is represented by the hapless butcher (Liu Xiaoye), who foolishly covets a courtesan (Kitty Zhang, evincing Anita Mui poise). Vengeance is embodied in the thief (the Japanese actor-director Masanobu Ando), undercover as a chef and on a mission of payback for his father’s murder. Covering greed is the swordsman (Ashton Xu), who covets a mystical blade. Their narratives — the thief’s is the most interesting — ultimately entwine, somehow connected by a black iron meat cleaver.
According to the press notes, there are philosophical underpinnings to this high-speed blender of a movie. But they are buried in stylistic indulgences of Western films: whiplash editing, electric guitars, hip-hop beats, overhead angles, candy-colored romantic interludes, split screens, animation, food-preparation montages, sepia sequences, even a swordfight rendered as a video game. In his embrace of American sensibilities, Wuershan seems to have mastered a Hollywood specialty: empty calories served loud, flashy and fast.
Source : nytimes
