Through the 1980s and beyond, director and martial arts choreographer Ching Siu-tung proved adept at staging Hong Kong action scenes as hyperactive, mind-bending extravaganzas. Among the most innovative and electrifying were those in his 1983 directing debut Duel to the Death, a work that still stands strong amid a filmography strewn with classics.
The duel of the title is one that takes place between top Chinese and Japanese fighters every 10 years. This time round, the combatants are Chinese swordsman Bo Ching-wan (Damian Lau) and Japanese martial arts master Hashimoto (Norman Tsui). The fight is open to only a select group of onlookers – all top martial artists themselves – but as they and the two fighters each make their way on foot to the duel, ninjas turn up and spectacularly get in the way.
Viewers first meet the ninjas right at the start, when they slip into a library and make copies of Chinese swordplay scripture, then battle monks in a night-time flurry of flying leaps, vanishing acts and suicide bombing. From then on, Ching runs riot with the creative potential of the mysterious black-clad fighters, giving them bizarre powers to wondrously cinematic effect. When ninjas on kites, ninjas forming a giant ninja, and nude female ninja aren’t enough, there’s even a ninja whose decapitated head issues a warning before exploding.
Whether ninjas are in a scene or not, Ching goes overboard to make conflicts ever more dazzling as the film goes on. The underlying techniques weren’t necessarily new in 1983: director King Hu, for instance, had worked with choreographer Han Ying-chieh to elevate wuxia cinema in the 1960s and early ‘70s with thrilling choreography that used trampolines, wires and furious cutting. Ching draws on these methods, but in Duel to the Death he takes the craft to outrageous heights. One fight late in the film between Bo Ching-wan and a lead ninja would be wild enough to end another movie on a high note, yet here it’s only a warm-up before a sensational final cliff-top showdown.
Ching Siu-tung’s action choreography has burnished Duel to the Death’s reputation over the years, but there’s still more in the film to impress. The screenplay offers fine wuxia material as it develops the two main swordsmen with strong contrasts – one extols fighting for the glory of nation and family, while the other sees honour in simply exterminating an opponent – and brings the pair together at length as their fight looms. And when a larger power play emerges around them, their views on success and failure, integrity and futility shape the lead-up to the big battle and its staggering conclusion. In subsequent years Ching would develop his action into more sophisticated forms of wuxia and fantasy cinema, but for its sheer extravagance matched with evocative martial chivalry, Duel to the Death easily holds its own as a landmark work in Hong Kong film.