Martial arts fans have it so good right now; it’s truly incredible. With deals being made to restore and re-print various titles out of Hong Kong, what was once hard to find (Hard Boiled) and barely accessible on HD (Rumble in the Bronx) is suddenly widely available through any number of outstanding boutique physical media distributors. One such title is filmmaker Tsui Hark’s 1995 wuxia deconstruction The Blade (刀), joining The Criterion Collection with a brand-new 4K UHD restoration, visual essay, written essay, and several archival materials. It’s a remarkable time to be a martial arts fan and having the chance to explore a restored version of a work that challenges what fans know is both aptly timed and necessary to better understand the genre as a whole.
A scene from THE BLADE. Photo courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
Ding On and Iron Head (Vincent Zhao and Moses Chan, respectively) serve their master (Austin Wai) as members of his Refined Blade forge. One day, while the two are out making deliveries, they observe a monk battling members of a horse thief gang and have very different reactions at the outcome — so different that each would end up on a hero’s journey that challenges what each know of the world and themselves.
The following 4K UHD Blu-ray home review is based on a retail edition provided by The Criterion Collection.
The Blade is chaos. It’s disorganization. It’s cruelty and bloodshed. It’s so disinterested in adhering to the traditions of the wuxia subgenre that it forces the audience to confront their own expectations in the process of the watch. Rather than a world built on rules of chivalry wherein even the villains have a code of ethics, the only real rule in this tale is that you must be stronger than the one attacking you in order to survive. This is made clear in two significant moments, one overt and one much more subtle. In the first, it comes via the narration from Sui Ling (Suet Nei), The Master’s daughter who is telling the story. As we watch the events play out in the past, among the many things that she says and we observe, one of them is the discussion of transactions. The Master had taught his daughter that all things, regardless of what one thinks in the moment, is a transaction in which something is given and a debt is owed. She doesn’t understand this at first and it’s not until the epic conclusion in which Ding On faces Flying Dragon (Xiong Xin-xin) that we realize what The Master meant. In the world of wuxia, the hero is a noble person who rights a terrible wrong committed by a villain and the setup by screenwriters Hark, Koan Hui (Black Mask), and So Man-sing (Once Upon a Time in China and America) initially appears to fall within the expectation (Ding On’s father was killed by Flying Dragon when Ding On was a baby and he was raised by The Master as a debt to Ding On’s father), until we come to realize that Ding On’s father and The Master weren’t noble individuals, just other terrible individuals for whom their respective debts hadn’t yet come due. In other words, they were likely the villains in someone else’s story for whom the transaction had not yet been completed and, now, Ding On merely perpetuates the cycle of bloody transactions by seeking vengeance against Flying Dragon. The second, much more subtle aspect is Ding On’s discovery of Refined Blade’s name etched into non-Refined Blade creations after his hand amputation and recovery. In this scene, not only does the shop owner selling the tools try to sell to Ding On, speaking to him as if he doesn’t know what Refined Blade is (the shop owner is, of course, oblivious to Ding On’s past work at the forge), but then harangues him, insults him, and demoralizes him when Ding On questions the quality of the work. This moment can be read as a significant change The Master has undertaken in order to survive whatever alterations to demand are happening in nearby areas since Ding On’s departure, but it could also read as the existence of a second market in which forgeries and counterfeits proliferate. Considering the values that the screenwriters place within this world, the erosion of morality, the exportation of violence, the exultation of cruelty, the latter interpretation seems far more likely. In this way, The Blade conveys that the further from the forge one gets, the more The Master’s ideals decay as populaces who may not be able to afford the actual high-quality and respectable work may just want the name. Of course, any forgery bearing the mark of Refined Blade that doesn’t live up to The Master’s standards just chips away at his own reputation, but, then, everything is a transaction, right, and the creation of such a high-standard is bound to catch the eye of those who want to do less work for high profit, something which stealing the name can accomplish. Thus, the cycle propagates and the chivalrous will never prosper.
R: Xiong Xin-xin as Flying Dragon in THE BLADE. Photo courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
For an even deeper dive into The Blade and the methods Hark uses to convey the deconstruction of wuxia, the lone new featurette, a visual essay from filmmakers Taylor Ramos (Every Frame a Painting) and Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Painting) titled “The Edges of Wuxia,” is where you need to go first. In fact, if you’ve never seen The Blade, watch this first. Yes, it will cover a few details of the narrative that some may want to discover without spoilers, but this featurette covers the ways in which audiences possessing specific subgenre-based expectations need to toss them out before starting. After covering what wuxia is and its language as a primer, incorporating footage from a variety of well-known wuxia titles, Ramos and Zhou dive into the ways in which The Blade purposefully defies almost everything within the primer. They provide examples such as the way violence is depicted with expectation being of clear and clean presentation in-camera so that we can follow the action, whereas cinematographer Venus Keung (DOA: Dead or Alive) utilizes a cinéma vérité style which translates to action that can be out of frame, too close, or obscured in some way, making it difficult to understand what’s happening outside of the result. In contrast to something like Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2022), whose fights scenes are precise, beautiful, and poetic in each sequence, The Blade’s are often pure chaos, a visual representation of the type of life lived within this world. The essayists also discuss the presentation of chivalry within this world, a different type of hero’s journey, and a great deal more in just under 11 minutes. Of all the things the essayists say, their description of deconstruction lingers in the mind while watching The Blade: by understanding the tropes and techniques of a genre, by getting what makes a film fit within a specific subgenre’s categorical box, one can create something that scratches at its edges. The Blade doesn’t just scratch, it slices and draws blood.
The other new piece of supplemental material is a brand-new essay from screenwriter/author Lisa Morton titled “Cutting Deep.” Where “The Edges of Wuxia” focuses on the genre aspects and subversion of tropes, “Cutting Deep” is a more specific dive into Hark’s adaptation of the One-Armed Swordsman tale, a 1967 film directed by Chang Cheh for Shaw Brothers, and the energy of Hong Kong between the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 and the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British control to China. Her essay creates a context to better understand why critics and scholars view The Blade as a departure from Hark’s other work as well as the specific character arcs for the three main figures of the film — Sui Ling, Ding On, and Iron Head. Like all good supplemental materials, the written and visual essays serve as a handshake to enlighten viewers as they explore The Blade.
The remaining supplemental materials include a 2006 making-of documentary titled “Action et vérité” featuring Hark, Hui, and Xin-xin; a 2011 Q&A with Hark from the New York Asian Film Festival; International-version titles; and an English-dubbed trailer.
Speaking of the on-disc aspects, let’s get into the 4K UHD restoration.
Song Lei as Siu Ling in THE BLADE. Photo courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
According to the booklet, The Blade is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio with the 4K UHD restoration made from the original 35 mm camera negative and the original Cantonese monaural soundtrack was remastered from the original magnetic track. The 4K UHD Blu-ray is presented with Dolby Vision HDR and the Blu-ray is HD SDR. From a technical perspective, the bitrate on the 4K UHD Blu-ray is impressively high with a fairly-steady hold in the 90 Mbps range with occasional dips into the upper 80s and jumps into the 100 Mbps. The film as a whole isn’t presented like a typical wuxia with heightened colors from which HDR would dazzle, instead, the cinematography is both filled with natural colors and contrasts. This presents itself in the image of the titular blade — a severed saber with a hilt — as shown in flashback after it breaks during the fight with Flying Dragon wherein he kills Ding On’s father as the broken blade lies on the dark ground, the hard rain mixing with the crimson blood as it pelts the saber. Though the cinematography is difficult to follow due to the vérité style, one can still identify what’s occurring on screen in the nighttime sequences thanks to the enhanced details enabling one to separate night sky or dark ground for a darkly-clad individual. This is particularly useful in the second attack from the horse thieves upon Ding On and Black Head (Chung Bik-ha) in which Ding On demonstrates his new-found skills and fights them off single-handedly. Whites are bright, blood is crimson, skin tones are natural, and blacks are nice and inky — everything you could want from a 4K UHD presentation with HDR. The sound remains monaural; however, it’s presented without grime or deterioration, making the score, folly work, and dialogue crisp and clear. Overall, this is a strong restoration that will delight fans of The Blade and create awe in new ones.
In terms of packaging, The Blade is housed in the typical clear-plastic case with new artwork from Oliver Barrett on the cover depicting Ding On in combat with the blade fashioned like a chain spear upon his arm. The discs contain artwork that is similar in nature, but different enough to help differentiate from the 4K UHD and Blu-ray discs in the combo edition. The 4K UHD disc is primarily red with a white blade on the right side, the English title on the left, the Cantonese title above the center hole, and the format identification underneath. The Blu-ray disc is formatted the same, except the disc is black with the blade red. Both discs feature a large “C,” the signature logo for Criterion, along the left side of the disc when orientated properly. When the discs are removed, the reverse of the liner reveals the title of the Cantonese title of the film in red on the right side with the rest of the space in black. The accordion essay booklet follows a similar design with the front a white page with the English title in red across the blade with the back in black, no title, and the blade in red pointed downward.
L-R: Vincent Zhao as Ding On and Xiong Xin-xin as Flying Dragon in THE BLADE. Photo courtesy of The Criterion Collection.
The Blade is the fifth film by Hark to be added to The Criterion Collection, but the only solo title (the other four are the Once Upon a Time in China: The Complete Films collection. Though it is viewed as a departure from his works prior — Swordsman (1990), Twin Dragons (1992); Green Snake (1993) — The Blade is no less a masterwork from the acclaimed filmmaker. One cannot deconstruct a genre without first understanding and respecting it, and each stunt, each line of dialogue, each seeming mistake in edit or cinematography is merely a thin cut at the genre itself; expertly placed in order to examine the genre and the way that audiences engage with it. The Blade is cruelty. The Blade is selfishness. The Blade is arrogance. It is the debt owed to audiences for all the goodwill built up by generations of wuxia stories. It doesn’t diminish those that came before and certainly not those that have released since, but it does inspire audiences to re-evaluate the way in which wuxia tales create confinement in their reinterpretation of the rules of reality and how that confinement only leads to complacency. To that end, this is an easy recommendation, whether at full cost or on sale (during one of the many site flash sales or Barnes & Noble events), for any cinephile looking to add to their collection or general viewer interested in challenging their preconceptions.
The Blade Special Features:
- *NEW* 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- *NEW* audio commentary featuring Hong Kong cinema expert and producer Frank Djeng
- Action et vérité (2006), a documentary featuring director Tsui Hark, co-screenwriter Koan Hui, and actor Xiong Xin-xin
- *NEW* video essay by filmmakers Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Painting) (10:50)
- New York Asian Film Festival Q&A with Tsui from 2011
- Alternate English-dubbed track
- International-version opening and end credits
- Trailer
- *NEW* English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by author Lisa Morton
- New cover by Oliver Barrett
Available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray March 31st, 2026.
For more information, head to the official The Criterion Collection The Blade webpage.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews
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