The Three Swordsmen would, at least on the surface, seem to have a lot of promise, with a solid cast and crew. However, from the first scene, where a character gives some lengthy exposition that's supposed to set up the story, but ends up making not one lick of sense, should tell the viewer right away that this is definitely not among the top tier of wu xia films.

As far as I can surmise, there is supposed to be a tournament between the region's top swordsmen. But after one of them, Sam Siu (Andy Lau), is framed for murder and flees, the other two, Ming (Brigitte Lin, playing a male role complete with some atrocious dubbing of her voice) and Dao (Elvis Tsui), head off to find him.

Or something to that effect. There are just way too many characters and sub-plots thrown in, and making heads or tails of the proceedings is an exercise in futility. Matters aren't helped any by the poor subtitles on the Universe DVD, which are obscured by the actor's white outfits for much of the time, and pretty much incomprehensible even when they're readable.

Normally, the action scenes could save a film like this, and with Tony Leung Siu-Hung and Yuen Bun (two of the more under-rated action directors) at the helm, you might be right. The key word there is "might".

The fights are extremely silly stuff where sleeves can lop off limbs and people just generally bounce around for seemingly no rhyme or reason. Even putting aside the absurdity of the brawls (which are exaggerated even by wu xia standards) the editing is so haphazard that it's hard to tell exactly what the hell is going on.

Ultimately, even though The Three Swordsmen is a sub-par effort, it is salvaged somewhat via the personality of the leads. No one is going to mistake this movie for their best work, but they really seem to be trying, which at least makes the viewer somewhat interested to see their fate. It's too bad, though, that the ultimate payoff for the viewer investing ninety minutes of their time really isn't worth the effort.

RATING: 4