 |
| All Images Courtesy: 88 Films, Celestial Pictures |
88 Films gives the limited-edition boutique blu-ray treatment to one of the famously harder-to-find Shaw Brothers martial arts/wuxia classics, with their new disc of 1979’s To Kill A Mastermind. Often said to be something of a sibling film to The Five Venoms/Five Deadly Venoms, this lesser-seen title shares a similar premise but takes a pretty different narrative approach which stops it from feeling redundant. It also is a very action-forward film, with stylish combat occupying as much of the runtime as possible. Shaw Brothers fans will definitely be excited about this one, so let’s check out To Kill A Mastermind, and 88 Films’ blu-ray treatment of it.
THE FILM:
To Kill A Mastermind tells the tale of a ruthless underground network of criminals who hold a region of China in their reign of terror. The local magistrate has vowed to take them down, leading to the gang recruiting several new assassins to join their ranks – but one of the new assassins is a spy sent by the magistrate to kill all the other assassins and take out the unseen, scheming mastermind behind the whole organization. But the magistrate is playing his cards very close to his chest, and so is the film: we do not know which of the assassins is actually the spy, and we are just as in the dark as the assassins as they tear their own organization apart trying to figure it out.
The idea of a martial arts/wuxia whodunnit is an intriguing one. However, I’m not sure that the execution here works. In trying to keep the audience in the dark about which of the characters is the spy, the script also keeps us entirely in the dark about who these characters are: we don’t get to know any of them, and we are kept entirely outside the narrative, as a bunch of fairly vague sketches of characters fight amongst themselves, and we aren’t sure who we are supposed to be rooting for. We can’t even have any suspicion about who we think might be the spy, because we have literally no information about anybody. It’s a very odd narrative choice that doesn’t really give us anything to grab onto for emotional investment; we’re just watching these characters fight among themselves, and that’s about it.
But on the other hand, a strong argument could be made that it doesn’t matter, because the mystery is really just a skeleton to hang a whole bunch of very cool fights on. Watching the characters fight among themselves is the whole point of the film. Style over substance, absolutely, but it can get away with it because the style more than carries the whole enterprise. To Kill A Mastermind is a movie that pretty much never slows down. There is almost always a fight scene happening, and they are all extremely cool, in classic Shaw Brothers style. The action is extremely varied as well: we get wirework wuxia combat, we get hard-hitting hand-to-hand martial arts combat, we get bloody weapon combat with wild devices in the tradition of the fatal flying guillotine. As with The Five Venoms/Five Deadly Venoms, each assassin has a special skill, be it a weapon or a fighting style, which sets them apart, and that adds even more variety to each combat pairing. It feels like the kind of movie that the programmers of fighting games would absolutely love, because each bout between assassins with different skills or special weapons does feel a bit like a fighting game level, with the victor moving on to a future fight.
In addition to the fight choreography and action being excellent, the movie is very well-shot as well, in classic Shaw Brothers fashion with their 2.31:1 Shawscope cinematography. Shot compositions and camerawork stand out impressively, as an integral part of the action. Given that this film has always been quite difficult to find, this new blu-ray will be a massive upgrade over whatever bootlegs fans have seen before, and a very welcome one: seeing this film in its intended aspect ratio, in the best quality possible, is absolutely essential.
Its weirdly detached narrative holds To Kill A Mastermind back from being a truly great Shaw Brothers film, but it is at least a very good one. It has style to burn, and it is built around action sequences that rarely stop for long. While I found its story lacking, and felt as though I was always more or less on the outside, there is no denying what a fun spectacle it is. Fans of classic Shaw Brothers productions like The Five Venoms will have a great time with it, and it is well deserving of the 88 Films limited edition treatment.
THE 88 FILMS LIMITED EDITION:
88 Films presents To Kill A Mastermind in a nice physical package which unfortunately houses a barebones disc. Physical media collectors will appreciate the swanky slipcase with the new artwork that 88 Films has commissioned, and the disc comes with a set of art cards with stills from the film, but those physical bells and whistles are it as far as extras are concerned.
But the main attraction here is simply that we are getting a rare and lesser-seen Shaw Brothers film for the first time in any sort of high-quality transfer, and so the big question is – is the transfer good? Fortunately, that is an unequivocal YES. 88 Films presents To Kill A Mastermind in a new (or at least, new to western audiences) HD transfer provided by Celestial Pictures, sourced from the original negative, and it looks beautiful. Detail is strong, colors and contrast are rich and vivid, it has a nicely filmic appearance with some natural film grain, and there are very few defects that I could see. It may not be a 2k or 4k transfer, but it’s pretty great, and I think fans who have been wanting to see this in any sort of modern, high quality will be thrilled. The mono Mandarin audio likewise sounds totally fine: a nice and clean vintage mix.
The lack of extras is inevitably disappointing – I really would have loved some interviews or a commentary by a Hong Kong film scholar like Frank Djeng to put it into context. In particular it would have been nice to get some history of WHY this is such a historically rare and hard-to-see film. But overall I’m happy with the release, since it’s nice to have this film available in such a high-quality version at all. The transfer is great, and 88 Films’ physical package is very nice. And the film, while flawed, is a very fun time. This is definitely one for Shaw Brothers fans to check out!
- Christopher S. Jordan
Share this review!