On paper, a film like Mystic Blade sounds appealing. You have a bunch of fight scenes with weapons. You have a shadowy organization. There’s intrigue. However, while this may seem like a recipe for success, the film doesn’t connect at all.
Look: it’s dumb to criticize a martial arts movie like this based on its acting. But everyone involved here blatantly spent more time on fight choreography and finding suitable stuntmen than…well, the acting. You have our hero Sam (Don Ferguson), a skilled assassin part of a group of killers known as…THE SHADOW SYNDICATE. Sam tries leaving this life behind and falls in love with a woman and begins anew in Thailand.
But the syndicate isn’t too far behind.
The fight choreography here is the MVP, even when it borders on the unbelievable. Similar to kaiju films like Godzilla, this flick is absolutely unbearable when there is uninterrupted dialogue for more than thirty-five seconds. Every actor looks like they’re reading off a teleprompter when they try and read their lines. It’s totally distracting. This film is truly only for fans of Ferguson and stuntman/martial artist/director David Ismalone. Interestingly, Ismalone lent his talents to much better films like Ong Bak. But his vision fails to connect here.
There are a lot of fun fights (albeit sometimes implausible ones) here. But the direction is flat. The acting is almost laughable. The film could only work for public library patrons who are true martial arts aficionados.