Nine-Ring Golden Dagger review by Bobby Blakey
Well GO USA continues to dominate the states in quality Asian cinema. While they put out a wide variety of films, there martial arts library is insane. The latest film Nin-Ring Golden Dagger comes from first time filmmaker Xiaojun Feng and stars Song Tian Shuo, Zhang Xin Tong, and Zhang Kai. Could this film bring the martial arts action fans are waiting for or will it fail to defend its honor?
Nine-Ring Golden Dagger follows General Yang Ye who heroically sacrificed himself during the Northern Expedition of Yongxi in the early Song Dynasty, and his posthumous reward, the Nine-Ring Golden Dagger, fell into Liao territory. A decade later, his daughters, Yang Baba and Yang Jiumei, set out to reclaim it, facing relentless dangers. On their return, they ally with Jiao Guangpu, a former soldier of Yang Ye. Together, they outwit and overcome three enemy attacks, ensuring the dagger’s safe return to Song lands.
The trailer for this film had me concerned just because it looked way sillier than you might expect from this genre. Had it balanced that I would have still enjoyed it, but thankfully it’s not near the comedy that it was leaning into. Sure, there are elements that are clearly trying to bring the laughs and even too silly at times, but it thankfully leans more into martial arts action than anything else.
I was pleasantly surprised with not only the amount of fight sequences they delivered, but the execution as well. Every fight is a lot of fun to watch and really kicks some ass. Blended with top notch choreography, wire work and skill these fights steal the movie and will no doubt please all the action fans out there. They focus more on the weapon fighting which I am here for and bring us a wide variety and fun new ways to fight with them. There is one fight that is slow and more dance like that is beautiful even if it doesn’t really fit with the narrative of the rest of the sequence.
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The story is simple enough and doesn’t get to convoluted like a lot of these films do, but the unbalanced silliness with the drama doesn’t always work. They have enough depth and character here to let the drama lead, but then randomly adding some slapstick takes you out of the importance of what is going on. Some of it works as it’s just the over-the-top nature of a character, but others are straight up three stooges’ level of comedy that makes zero sense.
Despite the misplaced comedy elements, the fighting and drama that is here makes up for it. It offers up a quick runtime and gets right to the action and keeps it coming often enough to engage your senses and knock out the stuff that might not work for you.
Decide for yourself and check out Nine-Ring Golden Dagger available now on digital and on the Well Go USA streaming app Hi-YAH!