Wong Kar-Wai's re-edit of his own 1994 period martial arts drama. A former swordsman living in the desert acts as an agent to find skilled fighters for those prepared to pay the price for vengeance. But his mercenary attitude masks disappointment and regret at the woman he has left behind.
Director Wong Kar-Wai here revisits his 1994 adaptation of Jin Yong's classic martial arts novel The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, starring Leslie Cheung as a man who becomes a cynical, embittered agent for contract killers after being rejected in love. The original film shattered the conventions of the genre by prioritising emotion over action and reducing the fight sequences to impressionistic blurs. This re-editing changes surprisingly little; the temporal shifts are just as obscure and the vignettes remain as slender as the performances are precious. Even so, Cheung's anecdotes about chivalric swordsmen (Tony Leung Kar-Fai, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Jacky Cheung), elusive beauties (Maggie Cheung) and siblings who may be a gender-bending schizophrenic (Brigitte Lin) matter much less than the sensuality of cinematographer Christopher Doyle's hypnotic experiments with light, shade and colour. So watch this twice - once to fathom the fragmentary structure and once simply to surrender to the audacious visual mastery.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Ouyang Feng | Leslie Cheung |
| Murong Yin / Murong Yang | Brigitte Lin |
| Blind Swordsman | Tony Leung (2) |
| Peach Blossom | Carina Lau |
| Huang Yaoshi | Tony Leung (1) |
| The girl | Charlie Yeung |
| Hong Qi | Jacky Cheung |
| Brother's wife | Maggie Cheung |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Wong Kar-Wai |
