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While not a bad film, this isn't terribly exciting, interesting, or memorable either - especially compared to some of the beautiful and excellent martial arts films coming out of China these days. There is a fairly interesting tale of a young martial artist who comes to a distant outpost village to claim his bride from a previously arranged marriage. As expected, the girl wants nothing to do with the stranger at first, but begins to develop feelings for him after he is forced to defend her and her father from a local gang of thugs.The premise is no different in most ways from the standard Western genre - only it's the Old West of China and they use swords instead of guns. But it moves at a snail's pace much of the time, and the action sequences are few and far between and poorly edited so that you can never really see much of what's happening. There are lots of long lingering shots of people staring at each other across the desert, riding horses, etc. etc. It all gets rather dull after a while, and the cinematography is bland and washed out, as is the print that the DVD was transferred from.Do yourself a favor and rent something by Zhang Yimou, or even one of He Ping's later and more polished films like "Warriors of Heaven and Earth" instead.
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