The action choreography is not intricately laid out. The early fights were done at night making it almost impossible to see the action. Instead of it feeling claustrophobic, it was more frustrating. This is an ugly hack at each other with swords with blood spewing and body parts flying kind of fighting. Fire is used in some fights and bodies are shown badly burned. It’s a war of vicious attrition between the handful of constables and the seemingly endless supply of bandits. I fully expected KC to cry out a quote from another movie, “Worse! How could it get any worse? We’re at the threshold of hell!”
KC may have been self-righteous, loyal to his superiors and men, and utterly ruthless to his enemies, but his true enemies knew that and used it against him. In his narrow view of the world, he completely missed who the real enemy was.
I thought Ku Feng gave a particularly sympathetic performance as the father of a blind daughter who is being hunted by KC. Chen Guan Tai conveyed a range of emotions as an obsessive constable doing his duty, as a man who cares for his men and also as a man who tastes the bitter bile of betrayal. Director Kuei Chih Hung and writer Szeto On were able to make me care about these two characters who were not easy to care for.
While I can appreciate how this movie tried to show the bleak suffering of the times, I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. I enjoyed the performances I mentioned. I prefer the lightning fast and well-choreographed fight sequences in other martial arts movies better than these slower fights. Without a clear-cut hero to root for or characters who are on screen long enough to be invested in them, I found myself unable to connect emotionally to most of the characters. Having said that, I can see why some people really like this movie and its bleak message, if you are a fan of martial arts movies, especially from this time and from this director, it is worth giving a try. For me, though a movie I’m not sorry to have watched, it’s one I won’t revisit.
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Bloodthirsty to the brink of insanity
Soaked in a nihilistic air of dread and foreboding, Killer Constable trades flashy heroics for a grim exploration of loyalty, desperation and moral decay. Imbued with dark, rainy atmospherics that mix the look and feel of the Japanese Chanbara classics with the craftsmanship of the Shaw Brothers hits, it's a wonderful feeling to have finally found a film by Director Kuei Chih-Hung that I can at last call good, and of course, it's the only wuxia he ever made. It's a stark, fatalistic and sobering tale where everyone is exhausted to the depths of their souls, every swordsman is a sadist, and every blade has to be bathed in blood before it's put away. It's not one to shy away from violence, covering the film and even the camera in contrasting splashes of bright red arterial spray as the brutally bloody swordplay dominates the runtime. Often shot in a way that's akin to a horror film, complete with spooky settings and moody lighting, all the while leaving us constantly haunted by increasingly surreal depictions of abject poverty and futile warfare. Despite moments of grandiosity overshadowed by sullen melodramatics and some deeply unsympathetic characters, where even the titular constable is cold-blooded and heartless, the performances of the film's cast shine. Chen Kuan-tai illuminates the screen with fighting skill and emotional passion, out-grimming the Grim Reaper as nothing stands in the way of his mission, not women, children or even his friends. At the same time, Ku Feng, as his equal, plays an especially homicidal robber-chief who thinks nothing of throwing all his men at their relentless pursuer; ethics of right and wrong become increasingly blurred, with only Yu Tsui Ling being the only cheerful performance in a sea of despair. Unfolding over a series of black, smoky, impressionistic wastelands, Killer Constable can be a deeply depressing experience just as much as it can be an incredibly thrilling one, a film that's both blessed and cursed by its unique style, downbeat, gloomy and bloodthirsty to the brink of insanity.Was this review helpful to you?
