Last Updated on October 6, 2020 by rob
Jie (Angela Mao) sets out to take vengeance on four ruthless killers and their master – the corrupt Prince Kui – who murdered her parents 20 years before. Armed with her own formidable kung-fu skills and a collection of deadly scorpions, Jie is helped in her quest by a mother and son team of pickpockets, Thousand Hands and her son Ah Shu. But as Jie wreaks bloody revenge on her enemies her journey is shadowed by a mysterious martial arts expert named Master Yuan and assorted fighters who have their own hidden agendas.
Made by Shaw rival Golden Harvest and one of that company’s best films, this is a cracking martial arts adventure with a decent story, likeable characters, terrific action scenes and a fabulous lead in Angela Mao. The basic setup for what subsequently transpires here is clearly, shall we say, ‘borrowed’ from Lady Snowblood (1973) but that aside, plus the reuse of a couple of third act plot elements involving a double for the bad guy and the wounding of our heroine, Broken Oath is very much its own thing. Angie Mao might be a pint-sized heroine but she’s an incredibly athletic and agile figure, able to kick and punch and even fight with a pole to quite thrilling effect. For this viewer martial arts heroines are anyways just about unbeatable in the genre but Angela is one of the best. It’s not just that she’s pretty and can kick ass with such ferocity, it’s that her characters feminine wiles are equally well deployed in the service of revenge.
A chiffon scarf Jie coquettishly waves in the face of her enemies lets her drape them with deadly stinging scorpions! A brothel Jie needs to be sold into so she can get close to one of her targets has her proudly asserting her own price after a pimp tries to purchase her for a pittance. At every point writer/director Jeong Chang-hwa’s satisfying script finds new ways to showcase Jie’s power and independence. Our heroine is supported in her quest by her late mother’s former cellmate Thousand Hands, her son Ah Shu and a sympathetic Abbess who runs the monastery Jie was raised in, a likeable supporting cast we’re always pleased to see come to Jie’s aid. It’s a lot of fun and a much warmer, more emotionally open film than Snowblood.
The plotting credits the villains with cunning, intelligence and toughness – Jie’s carefully planned seduction of Boss Hao, the first on her hitlist, seems to be going swimmingly until Hao quite unexpectedly turns the tables on her – and they’re a reasonably colourful bunch of bad guys equipped with distinctive weapons and fighting styles. Sammo Hung has a supporting role as a baddie who nearly strangles our Ang with a chain and he’s given an especially memorable sidekick who wears samurai armour and finishes off his enemies by spitting fire over them from a pouch of alcohol he keeps on his waist. His demise is, as you might expect, agreeably explosive. I also liked the smaller touches such as the spectacle of Boss Hao sporting an outrageously blingy eyepatch made from a gold coin after losing one eye to Jie’s mother whom he’d tried to rape decades earlier.
One of the other appealing aspects of Broken Oath is that it manages to find room for plenty of typically slapstick Hong Kong humour. A sequence in which a spy tries to force a messenger to hand over a confidential letter is really very funny as is an early bit of scene setting in which pickpocket Ah Shu goes up against Jie before realising he’s met his match. It all makes for a nice balance with the action. The direction by Chung-hwa (who also directed 1972’s King Boxer, the film which almost single-handedly sparked the martial arts craze in the West) shows real skill in both the blocking and editing of the action sequences. Distinctive visual flourishes – such as a judicious use of slow motion in the climactic battle as Jie brings down a couple of jumping bad guys by hurling both her swords up to impale them mid-leap, plus a really striking moment when the solitary figure of the evil Prince Kui appears and suddenly eight identically dressed figures pop out from behind him – really enhance the action. Yet this isn’t one of those martial arts movies solely defined by its setpieces. It’s just a good movie in which most everything works well and boasts at heart a heroine who makes an indelible impression on the viewer.
