Considered by many critics to be the best martial arts film made in China in the past few years, Brotherhood’s style is firmly rooted in the tradition of classic wu-xia, which emphasises in equal doses the narrative dynamics of the relationship between the various characters and the physicality of the action scenes.
The film is set in the 17th century at the end of the Ming dynasty, and weaves together the real story of the decline of the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian with fictional tales of bad government and palace conspiracies. The story revolves around three members of the Jinyiwei, – a secret military police squad occasionally used to carry out assassinations ordered from high up. The three of them – Oriental-style Musketeers – are bound by total loyalty to each other, but they hide secrets that they dare not reveal: Shen Lian, the leader of the group, is in love with a courtesan whose freedom from slavery he would like to buy; Lu Jianxing, the oldest and most ambitious of the group, is willing to bribe his superiors in order to get the promotion he has agonized over for so long; young Jin Yichuan is being blackmailed by an ex-friend with whom he shared a criminal past. All of the three men, therefore, need money, and fast. In the meantime, the young emperor Chongzen orders the men to kill the eunuch Wei, considered to be a threat to the throne. But to save his own life, Wei offers the imperial assassins a huge sum of money, and from this moment on the story becomes increasingly complicated, partly because Zhao, the powerful boss of the Jinyiwei, whose orders the three follow, is an extraordinarily ambiguous character. He hides a secret; he is Wei’s adopted son. The latter asks him to dispose of the three men…
Basically, none of the characters in the story are faultless: this is one of the most interesting aspects of the film, which manages to avoid pitting the good guys against the baddies. It simply portrays life at the palace in such a way that reflects the moral ambiguity that pervades Chinese society today.
These men from the past embody all the weaknesses of the present. The three protagonists, anti-heroes despite their martial arts skills, seem to have become part of the imperial guard by mere chance, they seem to be devoid of the cynicism necessary to be cold-blooded assassins, they struggle to win their colleagues’ esteem. And the methods used by the authorities ring eerily true: the intimidation, the lack of clarity in arrest warrants, the persecution of political adversaries… Not to mention corruption: the menu of the day for the current Chinese leadership. And everything can be quantified with cash: power, loyalty to the flag, love, human lives. The underlying message of the film is that when men betray their country and its values, the nation goes to rack and ruin. Towards the epilogue, a rifle appears in the hands of the evil boss of the Jinyiwei who, in the meantime, has sold out to the Manchurians. It seems to underline that fact that, behind the moral decay of the imperial court, the code of honour that ties hand and sword combat together, has somehow been abandoned. The Chinese title of the film – literally translated as Embroidered Spring Blade – is, in fact, a reference to the type of sword used by the Jinyiwei.
Maria Barbieri