The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman / Dao jiàn xiào / 刀见笑 (China, 2010)

Touted as director Wuershan's feature-film directorial debut, The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman is actually his second full-length feature after his debut "independent" film, the decidedly more mundane Soap Opera (2004). Since The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman, however, Wuershan has risen in stature in his homeland, becoming rather a specialist in special-effects-heavy, ancient-China fantasy epics. Currently, he is [still] finishing up Creation of the Gods III: Creation Under Heaven, the third and final episode of his three-film adaptation of the classic Chinese 16th-century fantasy novel Investiture of the Gods, after Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (2023 / trailer) and Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force (2025 / trailer).  

The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman may not be "epic", per say, but it is easy to see how it — coupled with Wuershan's follow-up Chinese box office smash, Painted Skin: The Resurrection (2012 / trailer) — became the first stepping stone towards where he is now. (Much more so, in any event, than to see how Peter Jackson's second and third films, the hilarious Meet the Feebles [1989 / trailer] and the hilarious Dead or Alive [1992 / trailer], respectively, not to mention his later more mainstream but nevertheless fun flop The Frighteners [1996 / trailer], ever led to his heading the Lord of the Rings [2001-03] trilogy.)

Trailer to

The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman:

For us, The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman was another cheap DVD purchase at our local Euro Shop, a German chain possibly comparable the USA's Dollar General, but not quite as evil yet and without nut-and-dash men. The cover sold itself to us, as we do like our wuxia and Chinese costume dramas, and we can only say it was a well-invested euro as the movie was indeed a pleasant discovery. Indeed, it has found its way into our DVD collection for rewatching instead of, like most Euro Shop DVDs — see, for example: Dead Zone (2022), The Survivalist (2022), Hickock (2017), The Hollow (2015), Arrowhead (2015), Project Ithica (2019), Gangnam Zombie (2023), Ghosts of War (2020), Gogol: Origins (2017), Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot (2020), Vanguard (2020), Compulsion (2013) and Project Gemini (2022), among many — landing in our donation bag.

A brash, time-jumping action costume comedy, The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman's narrative intertwines the three stories of the titular characters, all of whom are connected to the "magic" meat cleaver so central to the entire movie, into a flashy and complicated but oddly unconfusing — at least after about ten minutes — and satisfying whole, despite the fact that one tale is actually told as a flashback within a flashback. Whether or not the temporally complicated narrative structure was absolutely necessary is open to easy discussion, but necessary or not, Wuershan and his co-scriptwriters — four, aside from the director — manage to make it work. That in itself is something truly commendable.

The interludes of the three main characters are headed by the given person's driving motivation: Desire, the tale of a coarse butcher named Chopper (Liu Xiaoye), whose desire to purchase the beautiful Madam Mei (Kitty Zhang of Curse of the Deserted / Huang cun gong yu [2010 / trailer]) as his wife from the local high-class bordello is continually thwarted by the black stallion-riding swordsman Big Beard (Senggerenqin of Diamond Dogs [2007 / trailer] and most Wuershan movies); Vengeance, tells of a mute thief (Masanobu Andō of Sadako vs. Kayako [2016 / trailer], Sukiyaki Western Django [2007 / trailer], Nightmare Detective [2006 / trailer], Battle Royal [2000 / trailer] and more) who ends up the apprentice of a master chef (Mi Dan), an event that is not as coincidental as initially appears and leads to tragic betrayal and death; lastly, Greed, which reveals how the "magic" cleaver came to be made, tells of the bloodthirsty warrior Dugu Cheng (Ashton Xu), who forces the great swordsmith Fatty Tang (You Benchang of The Fox Lover [2013 / trailer] and The Wrath of Vajra [2013 / trailer]) to make a sword from magic metal, not realizing that the metal has a magical drawback.

Wuershan is a vibrant visualist with a good grasp of editing who was obviously raised on music videos and has managed to internalize every possibly stylistic flourish or visual trick that has every been utilized in that medium. At more than one point, he even uses an animated interlude that is much closer stylistically to A-ha's video for Take Me On (1985) than, say Tarantino's use of animation in Kill Bill: Volume I (2003 / trailer), and twice he manages to work in totally out of place and temporally inappropriate, but immensely enjoyable, music interludes. But despite the throw-everything-on-the-screen approach that the director uses to convey his time-jumping narrative, neither the story nor the visuals ever become confusing or annoying. Rather, they keep you attentive, interested, amazed — enthralled by the fully realized mise-en-scene and world created onscreen. Occasionally the editing does veer into overkill, but it becomes hard to notice one bad excess when so many well-handled excesses flow across the screen.

If there in one true fault to be found in The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman, then it is the manner in which the butcher, Chopper, is played: in a movie of exaggerated characters, his is the only one that truly oversteps into excessive and grotesque caricature without achieving any level of surrealism (à la the rapping fat geji). A choleric buffoon, he is overplayed in that unfunny and forced, almost silent-movie-like exaggerated style used so often by "comic" characters in Asian movies. It is, in the end, a disservice to the character and the movie as a whole; his entire narrative, which is almost the core tale of the film, would have been far more compelling had he been played with greater restraint.*

* See, for comparison, the Korean film The Good, the Bad and the Weird (2008 / trailer): the "weird" character, despite being of a similar cut as the butcher, is never played as a grotesque and is all the more effective as a result. Ditto with the "funny" characters of the comparably stylistically exciting hit Kung Fu Hustle (2004 / trailer), a movie that surely influenced this movie here. They might be buffoons or comic, but they are also oddly surreal and never simple idiots.

In the end, however, the thespian mistake behind Chopper is but a small fault in a highly entertaining, occasionally surreal, and often fun action comedy that will easily keep your eyes glued to the screen as it thrills you and makes you laugh. The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman: highly recommended.

And now,

a public-service message from a wasted life: