Country: Hong Kong
Genre: Action/ Drama/ Martial Arts
Director: Siu Sang
Year: 1996
Rating: 
NOT WORTH YOUR TIME
For the first hour of Hero of Swallow, I thought it was going to be another Chinese version of the Robin Hood story, along the lines of Iron Monkey.
At first, it’s kind of fun. We see Thief Swallow (Yuen Biao) giving money to the poor and freeing young girls destined to be sold into sexual slavery. We find out that Thief Swallow’s girlfriend Chinny (Athena Chu) was kidnapped and sold into a brothel in Peking. Of course, Thief Swallow sets off to rescue her.
So far, so good. Yuen Biao is mischievous in the title role, like a Cantonese Errol Flynn. The martial arts choreography (by Lam Moon-Wa, who usually has a more brutal, immediate style), while nowhere near the level of Iron Monkey, is still an entertaining mix of acrobatics, wire-work, and flying. Mind you, there’s no real dramatic arc to any of the fight sequences. It’s just shapeless sparring. But that’s okay, because Hero of Swallow plays as a jolly fantasy in which the hero sets right the injustices of the world and the rich and corrupt are humiliated and defeated…or so we think.
But then the filmmakers decide to throw us a curve. “What if we ended the story the way it would happen in the real world?”
There are some big problems with that approach, though. Who wants to see a downbeat version of the Robin Hood myth, for one thing? For another, such an approach requires much more nuanced, subtle work than director Siu Sang and the committee that wrote the script are capable of.
Too bad. If the filmmakers had been content to play it straight, they had an excellent cast to do it with. Aside from Yuen Biao, Ma Chung-Tak is wonderfully irritating as Inspector Tang Yue-Chi, who is willing to abuse his power to put a net over Thief Swallow.
As Chinny, the Swallow’s true love, Athena Chu is charming and sweet. Elvis Tsui scores comic grace notes as the pathetically grateful recipient of Thief Swallow’s largess. And that’s only skimming the surface of the cast.
As it stands, only big fans of Yuen Biao’s acrobatics should see this film. Everyone else, stoked for a good time kung fu flick about sticking it to the rich and powerful will only end up being depressed.
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