Nerdly » ‘Rusty Blade’ Review

01st Feb2023

‘Rusty Blade’ Review

by Alain Elliott

Stars: Zhenhua Su, Chuxuan Liu, Cong Xiao, Mohetaer, Lixiao Yang | Directed by Huyi Sun, Xiaobai Song

Rusty Blade might seem like an odd title for a Chinese action drama movie but it absolutely makes sense once you have seen it. An expert swordsman returns home to his village after spending ten years in prison. Plenty of things have changed for him and his family and now the village is under threat from a ruthless criminal organisation. It doesn’t take a genius to work out whether he decides to go back on his vow to not pick up a sword again.

There was a time when I was really into Asian cinema and watched a lot of action movies from this part of the world (obviously horror movies were top of my list too). This was a time when Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had become hugely popular and led to many more big releases for any films that were somewhat similar. There’s no doubt if Rusty Blade was made twenty or so years ago it would be immensely more popular than it will be in 2023.

That is not to say this is a bad movie though. Far from it. Rusty Blade has plenty going for it. There’s clearly a decent budget here and it shows. Not just with the fight scenes – more on those later – but every shot of the village and its surroundings looks beautiful. Those fight scenes though are a huge highlight so it’s great that there are plenty of them.

Although there’s a well-written story here that is important, it isn’t the most original and you can pretty much guess each path it takes before it happens. Decent performances all round and making the action of top quality means that the story being a little underwhelming doesn’t really affect things. Each one of those sword fights is spectacular and the viewer will enjoy each and every one. The choreography is fantastic, showing a nice mix of fights that look realistic but also dance-like and just kinda cool looking. The best way in this kind of over-the-top, but occasionally grounded, type of movie. There is blood and, as this shows a lot of sword fighting, there is violence but it never goes too far that this couldn’t attract a mainstream audience.

The main ‘rivalry’ that runs through the movie is the best part of the story and the two main stars are great in their roles. In particular, I loved the look and style of the ‘villain’ and their clear differences in how they fought worked really nicely.

There’s familiarity here for anyone that has seen great Asian martial arts movies in the past, the reluctant hero story is nothing new. But if you wanna see intense, highly entertaining fight scenes, then Rusty Blade has that in bucket loads too. It might feel like this should have been released twenty years previous but that’s not a complaint here, influences from movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon can only be a good thing and Rusty Blade shows off the best parts of all its influences.