The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman

Another Chinese martial arts fantasy, but was short on the martial arts. It used a nesting story-in-a-story-in-a-story structure, with each level of the story centering on each of the titular characters, and their involvement with a magical cleaver. Allow me to demonstrate by structuring my review in the same way:

• The Butcher: Didn’t enjoy this character because he was very cartoonish and annoying. At this point, I was not aware that there would be an embedded story, so I was quite relieved when we were introduced to…

  • The Chef: Probably my favorite part of the movie. It was told in the style of more traditional folklore and toned down the cartoonishness that in my opinion plagued the first part. Which brings us to…

    • The Swordsman: Took on an even more gritty tone, which kind of made it boring. Thankfully, it didn’t last too long before we returned to…

  • The Chef: After having seen each of the three segments, I realized that the Chef portions struck the right balance between humor and seriousness. This storyline wrapped up nicely, but then we had to go back to…

• The Butcher: Did I mention he was annoying?

2 out of 5

Janie Jones

A good example of how having the writer-director present at the screening and Q&A session can affect one’s enjoyment of the movie. The movie itself was a pleasant, if clichéd, tale of a musician in a band who discovers that he has a teenage daughter who he has never met. Their relationship grows and he learns valuable lessons about life, blah blah blah. I might have liked it less if the director hadn’t introduced it and mentioned that he met his daughter as a teenager, and based the movie on that. This gave it a more personal context which changed the way I viewed the film.

2.5 out of 5

There will be one more post.