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Review: Brotherhood of Blades (繡春刀) (2014)
Oh my god, this has got to be the most fast-paced movie I've ever watched in my life!! The pacing is just go go go and something big is happening every scene. My perception is that this movie was made with a drama-style writing, which was why it felt so rushed. I usually see this kind of story played out over a number of episodes as opposed to compacted within 1 hr 50 min.
It was an okay movie. There were some parts of the movie that were tropey or cliched, but I just accepted it. I do miss some good action though and at least this movie gave us a lot of good fighting. Plus, most of the actors in this movie were top notch and I appreciated that.
Spoilers.
Story
The story takes place towards the end of the Ming Dynasty. The eunuchs had gained a strong foothold in politics and the current emperor wanted to take out the head of the eunuch faction. Three cash-strapped members of the Embroidered Guard were assigned to the assassination.
The eldest, Lu Jianxing, was looking at a promotion, and he'd many bribes already. The second, Shen Lian, was trying to earn money to buy his beloved favourite courtesan from the brothel. The youngest, Jin Yichuan, was constantly being extorted by his shixiong over a crime he'd committed in the past.
The three made their way to Wei Zhongxian, the eunuch they were to kill. Shen Lian was alone responsible for killing him while the other two fended off his guards. Shen Lian gave in to Wei Zhongxian's deal of taking money in exchange for letting Wei Zhongxian go, and from then on, they had trouble coming.
Zhao Jingzhong, the eunuch that had assigned them the mission, actually had personal ties with Wei Zhongxian, and had realized that they hadn't killed him even based on the burnt up corpse. For his own reasons that we'd find out later, he needed the embroidered guards dead, and so he tried to set up a trap to kill them.
He had them sent into the Yan family, who was famous for being well-guarded. They were given a phony arrest warrant accusing the official of being associated with the eunuch faction. The guards were blocked off from leaving but to the chagrin of Zhao Jingzhong, the guards had fought their way out, leaving only the son, Yan Junbin alive, with one hand chopped off by Shen Lian in the fight.
Shen Lian had previously intimidated an official while trying to find another of the eunuchs, and taken advantage of the situation to get a document that would allow him to buy the courtesan, Zhou Miaotong. He used his cut of the money to pay for Zhou Miaotong. However, it was revealed that she was deeply in love with Yan Junbin, who by then had been tortured so much that he pleaded for Shen Lian to kill him.
Shen Lian had bribed an official with lots of money on Lu Jianxing's behalf, though he was already on his way to receiving his promotion. However, the large amounts of money was very suspicoius and it put not only the other officials but also Lu Jianxing on Shen Lian's tail.
As for Yichuan, Shen Lian gave money to his shixiong, Ding Xiu, in hopes that he'd go away forever.
Shen Lian came clean to the others, and they agreed to leave, but they had to take care of things first.
Shen Lian want to collect Miaotong but she kept asking after Yan Junbin. She was also angry at Shen Lian, understandably so, as she remembered him as being part of the squad that had killed her father and forced her into the brothel. What Shen Lian had taken as romance and affection was Miaotong fearing for her life. She never loved him, she was only ever afraid of him. But Shen Lian didn't care. Even when he was attacked by guards and by Zhao Jingzhong at the brothel, he continued to protect her. When he carried her to the doctor's, she admitted that he would not be in this mess if not for her, because he wanted so badly to earn money to free her.
Lu Jianxing wanted to go to court to confess his wrongdoings before he left. He took the fall for Shen Lian, claiming that he alone had let Wei Zhongxian live, and he was eventually executed. Han Kuang, the official who'd been on the case, was the one who'd discovered that the corpse was not actually Wei Zhongxian. There was a conversation between him and the Emperor about how to deal with the remaining officials in his court. Many of them were loyal to the eunuchs, but unfortunately, the emperor knew that he couldn't kill everyone or else he'd have no one loyal to him anymore.
As for Yichuan, he'd been having a budding romance with the daughter of his doctor, Zhang Yan. Before he left, he'd gotten a message that Ding Xiu had taken them hostage. When he arrived, Doctor Zhang was already dead. Ding Xiu and Jin Yichuan fought and Jin Yichuan, who'd been nursing an illness, was about to die. Some assassins had appeared out of nowhere and they could have killed Ding Xiu but at the last second Jin Yichuan pushed him out of the way, saving him.
So at last, the only one who survived was Shen Lian, Miaotong, and Zhang Yan.
Two months later, Shen Lian and Ding Xiu were tracking down Zhao Jingzhong. I thought Ding Xiu joining forces with Shen Lian was bullshit from a story perspective but Zhou Yiwei is cool so unfortunately he gets a pass. I suspect he might be in the sequel.
It's revealed that Zhao Jingzhong has become loyal to the Manchurians, thinking that there was no hope for the Ming Dynasty. Shen Lian and Zhao Jingzhong fight and Shen Lian manages to kill him, while Ding Xiu fights the Manchurian warriors that were going to help Ding Xiu.
The movie ended with a flashback to Shen Lian, Lu Jianxing, and Jin Yichuan talking about their dreams of where they wanted to go.
I don't know if you can tell, but a lot of dramatic stuff happened in this movie in a short period of time. Again, I felt that this story was more appropriate for a drama, or even a miniseries. There were quite a few tropes but most of them could be overlooked because the action happened so fast lol.
I am iffy about the romantic subplot. I liked having Shen Lian face the fact that he was the aggressor in Miaotong's life, and that she didn't love him but was afraid of him, and that she never had positive feelings toward the embroidered guard. But I fear that she and Shen Lian will be turned into a romantic couple for real in the sequel.
In general I am surprised that a character like Shen Lian here is the protagonist, I didn't think a movie like this would be made, but this movie was from 2014, so maybe censorship wasn't quite so tight. Shen Lian had done the immoral thing of taking the bribe, and his brothers died as a result; but Zhao Jingzhong was going to kill them anyway, so maybe we're not supposed to think that Shen Lian had caused this trouble. We'll never know.
Production
I watched a very lq version of the movie lol so unfortunately I didn't get to experience the movie in its full glory lol. Mainly, it was squished and a bit blurry. But I could still tell that there was care put into the presentation.
When it comes to the embroidered guard, they must have beautiful embroidered uniforms, so at least we got that lol. But overall the colour palette of the movie was rather drab. It was dark and gray and rainy for the most part.
I did appreciate the action. None of the main actors are martial artists, and I think they mostly did a believable job, particularly Nie Yuan.
Characters
Shen Lian
Our main character. He is not completely moral though. He was cash strapped and obsessed with buying Miaotong's freedom. And when he was presented with a bribe, he took it.
He didn't come clean to his brothers until things started to get dangerous. And of course, Lu Jianxing was very angry with him. He'd sabotaged their mission and lied to them and now it was coming back to bite all of them. I don't quite know how Shen Lian feels about it. I can't say that he quite felt guilt about having taken the bribe. The movie moved way too fast for us to get a look on how he thought of his past actions. His only thought process was to deal with the problem.
With regards to Miaotong, I think he believed that he loved Miaotong, but maybe she was just someone safe that Shen Lian felt he could project his soft emotions on. We saw right from the beginning that he had no mercy when getting what he needed. And maybe Miaotong gave him a break from that. But he was blind to the fact that she just viewed him as a client, and was in love with someone else.
I do think that maybe Shen Lian felt guilty about Yan Junbin. For no reason other than that they were convenient, Yan Junbin's father was killed and he had his arm chopped off. Then he was tortured to get a confession out of something that Zhang Ying and Zhao Jingzhong had fabricated. By his end, he'd lost his sight after all the torture, and he'd asked Shen Lian to put him out of his misery.
When Shen Lian finally caught up to Jin Yichuan, who was already dead, he sobbed and apologized for his wrongdoings. Only at that point, did he have a chance to slow down and really understand how his actions had killed them. With the money, he'd raised too much attention to the brothers.
Shen Lian got revenge for his brothers by tracking down and killing Zhao Jingzhong. And afterwards, Ding Xiu told him where Miaotong and Zhang Yan were living, presumably so he could meet with them.
Shen Lian...is not a good man. He's just a man. I wouldn't say that I liked him. Maybe I would have fallen victim to the glitz of money as well, I can't say for sure. But he wasn't savvy enough to spend it properly to avoid attention to themselves. You could say that they would have died either way because even if they'd killed Wei Zhongxian, Zhao Jingzhong would have had them killed because the original order was just for capture and not for assassination, so killing the three guards would protect Zhao Jingzhong. But from Shen Lian's point of view, he did a wrong thing and he's paying for it now with the lives of his brothers.
Lu Jianxing
Jianxing was the eldest of the brothers, and he really wanted a promotion. His excuse was that his mother kept asking because his father was a Baihu rank and she wanted him to be one too. It was apparently common practice to bribe for a position and Jianxing had been dutifully paying these bribes. Otherwise, he kept out of trouble.
When Zhao Jingzhong and Zhang Ying had set up a trap to have the embroidered guards killed in the Yan family manor, Zhang Ying had said that whomever completed the task might have gotten a promotion. He expected Jianxing to jump at the opportunity, but Shen Lian had sensed something was off. Nonetheless, he was ordered so he had to go in.
Jianxing was alerted to the possibility of Wei Zhongxian being alive when he found out that Zhang Ying had been bribed with tons of money, which he didn't know about. Of course, he got really angry at Shen Lian, but their argument was cut short by Yichuan's illness acting up.
Jianxing agreed that they would all leave, though in his mind, he decided he'd take the fall. He dressed in his new promoted uniform to go to court to confess, where he admitted to letting Wei Zhongxian go for the money, though he didn't know where he was now. He was executed.
Jin Yichuan
Yichuan was the youngest. He was constantly getting blackmailed by his shixiong Ding Xiu. Apparently Yichuan had committed something bad in his past and that was what Ding Xiu was blackmailing him for. The amounts kept getting larger and larger and it was a problem for him.
He was also nursing an illness, and while seeing the doctor, he and the doctor's daughter seemed to take a liking to each other.
His problems came when Shen Lian had given Ding Xiu a huge amount of money to fuck off, but that just gave Ding Xiu a big reason to come back because now he realized Shen Lian was rich and Ding Xiu could just extort him.
When he was about to skip town, he received message that Ding Xiu had taken Doctor Zhang and Zhang Yan hostage, so he rushed over, finding Doctor Zhang dead and Zhang Yan unconscious. He fought with Ding Xiu but did not match up, especially with his illness. Yichuan fought with a dual-wield knife stance, which Ding Xiu said that their shifu never taught him. We also saw Shen Lian fighting with dual-wield knives with Zhao Jingzhong at the end, and I'm not sure if that's a clue.
At the end, Yichuan could have left Ding Xiu to die, seeing the assassins on the roof, but he saved them. My guess is that those assassins were sent by Zhao Jingzhong to kill Ding Xiu so he'd keep quiet about Zhao Jingzhong ordering Yichuan's death. It's a cycle of getting assassins to kill assassins for Zhao Jingzhong.
Zhao Jingzhong
Zhao Jingzhong was a eunuch. He was he one who tasked Shen Lian, Lu Jianxing, and Jin Yichuan to kill Wei Zhongxian. However, the actual order was just to capture him. It was Zhao Jingzhong who wanted Wei Zhongxian dead.
Wei Zhongxian was actually Zhao Jingzhong's godfather, which I suppose is how Zhao Jingzhong was able to climb to such a high position. He wanted Wei Zhongxian dead because with him out of the way, some of his power would fall to Zhao Jingzhong. He ended up killing Wei Zhongxian himself.
Anyway, Zhao Jingzhong was going to kill the three embroidered guards because they were the only ones who knew that he had ordered the kill. By the end, he was personally hunting down Shen Lian, proving himself to be a capable fighter.
After the debacle, it seemed that Zhao Jingzhong had lost his position with the court. After Shen Lian and Ding Xiu tracked him down, they found out that he was looking to defect to the Manchurians, having shaved his head in the Manchurian queue style.
Zhao Jingzhong was killed by Shen Lian in the end.
Wei Zhongxian
Wei Zhongxian was a powerful eunuch, who was wanted by the Emperor. However, Zhao Jingzhong had purposely miscommunicated the command and told the embroidered guards to kill him.
When Shen Lian got to Wei Zhongxian, Wei Zhongxian had offered him tons of cash. He knew how things worked in the corrupt Ming courts and he knew that the guards weren't paid well. Shen Lian fell for the bribe and Wei Zhongxian was let go, his servant taking his place instead.
I think Wei Zhongxian still enjoyed exerting his influence on the loose. He didn't have access to political power anymore, but he was extremely rich and money makes the world go round.
In the end, Zhao Jingzhong killed Wei Zhongxian in a fire. I assume he was killed for real this time.
Ding Xiu
Ding Xiu was Jin Yichuan's shixion who was always blackmailing him for money. The Chinese Wikipedia page for this movie has some spoilers so I think it goes into what it was that Jin Yichuan had done that was so bad but my eyes glazed over it because I didn't want to be spoiled.
Anyway, Ding Xiu got bolder and bolder, and when he found out that Shen Lian had some serious money, he was not going to let that go. Zhao Jingzhong realized that he was a pretty powerful fighter and enlisted him to kill Jin Yichuan, insisting on more money since he was going to kill his "precious" shidi.
Ding Xiu just enjoyed the power that he held over Jin Yichuan. We don't know the backstory between them but perhaps there is some resentment, as he showed surprise when Yichuan was fighting with a style he said shifu hadn't taught Ding Xiu. Ding Xiu was the stronger of the two, and even then Yichuan saved him.
Okay, so I think Ding Xiu teaming up with Shen Lian is bullshit because would Shen Lian trust Ding Xiu this much? Yes Ding Xiu was paid by Zhao Jingzhong, but Ding Xiu himself was bothering Yichuan day in and day out. I would NOT trust Ding Xiu and I'd just go on the journey alone. And what beef did Ding Xiu have with Zhao Jingzhong? Unless Zhao Jingzhong didn't pay him, I guess. But it was a job and Ding Xiu took it.
But yeah, Zhou Yiwei is just so charismatic and he made Ding Xiu into so much. He truly is a terrific actor.
Han Kuang
Han Kuang was the official responsible for the Wei Zhongxian case. He did not believe that the burnt up corpse was Wei Zhongxian, but it was Zhao Jingzhong who told him to let it go.
Han Kuang also thought it was very suspicious that Lu Jianxing had been able to pay a bribe to Zhang Ying for such a high amount of money. He was very suspicious of where the money came from, and he was already on the tail that the embroidered guards had taken money from Wei Zhongxian.
Eventually, Han Kuang got a report from the coroner that the person who'd died was far too young and couldn't have been Wei Zhongxian. It seems that Han Kuang was working directly for the Emperor's interests.
Zhou Miaotong
Miaotong was a courtesan that Shen Lian was in love with (or thought he was in love with). Shen Lian was somewhat of a gentleman, never getting to raunchy with Miaotong, and she spoke of it like a cute quirk. However, like Shen Lian, we were blind to the fact that she was a customer service worker and she was just treating Shen Lian like another client.
When Shen Lian said he'd raise money to buy her freedom, she mentioned that he wouldn't be able to raise the money or to get the document to free her, since the brothel was government run (and therefore needed official permission to release any courtesans). So she was kind of gently discouraging him.
But it only became known to Shen Lian that she had a lover when she had met with him before Shen Lian was to see her. At first I wondered if he was also a client but when she hugged him, she did look happy in a way she'd never seemed with Shen Lian, and even the Madame was shooing Yan Junbin away, knowing that they had a relationship.
Miaotong had sought Shen Lian out when she found out that Yan Junbin was captured (because of him). Shen Lian agreed to save him, seeing how worried she was, though by the time he got there, he was already so battered up and asked to be killed. When Shen Lian went to get Miaotong so they could leave, she asked if her going with him was a condition of her freedom; the way she spoke of it was very transactional, and also implying that going with him was something she had never thought of.
Miaotong explained that while he did treat her well, she never forgot the fact that she saw him when he was ransacking their house and killing her father. And that from then on, she'd always just been afraid of embroidered guards. Nonetheless, Shen Lian had protected her, perhaps trying to prove to himself that he had a heart and that he could love unconditionally.
Miaotong was grieving over Yan Junbin's death, and she wanted to die, but when Zhao Jingzhong was about to kill her, Shen Lian jumped in front of the spear. Shen Lian then took Miaotong to the doctor, and she acknowledged that if it weren't for her and the money that would be needed to free her, Shen Lian would not have been in the state that he was.
In the end, she went in hiding.
Zhang Yan
Zhang Yan was the daughter of the doctor that saw to Jin Yichuan's illness. She was bubbly and happy. She made fragrances to help with Jin Yichuan's coughs.
Ding Xiu took advantage of Jin Yichuan's feelings for her to lure him out for a final fight. Ding Xiu had knocked her unconscious, but admitted that he hadn't raped her.
She went in hiding with Miaotong at the end.
Themes
I think the general theme here was just that the Ming Dynasty was at its end. The court was insanely corrupt to the point that bribery was openly acknowledged to be normal. The movie started with introducing us to the eunuch faction that had taken over politics, and during the movie we see the mess that we get into to get rid of them. How can an emperor rule the country when there is so much infighting? You may call this regular politics, but so is the natural end of a dynasty, huh.
Overall
Like I said, this movie was just A Lot. It was very fast-paced and there was a lot to take in, but any mistakes are kind of erased from memory very quickly because of how fast the story moves. I did like the action and the great cast of actors, and I'll be watching the sequel for sure.
It was an okay movie. There were some parts of the movie that were tropey or cliched, but I just accepted it. I do miss some good action though and at least this movie gave us a lot of good fighting. Plus, most of the actors in this movie were top notch and I appreciated that.
Spoilers.
Story
The story takes place towards the end of the Ming Dynasty. The eunuchs had gained a strong foothold in politics and the current emperor wanted to take out the head of the eunuch faction. Three cash-strapped members of the Embroidered Guard were assigned to the assassination.
The eldest, Lu Jianxing, was looking at a promotion, and he'd many bribes already. The second, Shen Lian, was trying to earn money to buy his beloved favourite courtesan from the brothel. The youngest, Jin Yichuan, was constantly being extorted by his shixiong over a crime he'd committed in the past.
The three made their way to Wei Zhongxian, the eunuch they were to kill. Shen Lian was alone responsible for killing him while the other two fended off his guards. Shen Lian gave in to Wei Zhongxian's deal of taking money in exchange for letting Wei Zhongxian go, and from then on, they had trouble coming.
Zhao Jingzhong, the eunuch that had assigned them the mission, actually had personal ties with Wei Zhongxian, and had realized that they hadn't killed him even based on the burnt up corpse. For his own reasons that we'd find out later, he needed the embroidered guards dead, and so he tried to set up a trap to kill them.
He had them sent into the Yan family, who was famous for being well-guarded. They were given a phony arrest warrant accusing the official of being associated with the eunuch faction. The guards were blocked off from leaving but to the chagrin of Zhao Jingzhong, the guards had fought their way out, leaving only the son, Yan Junbin alive, with one hand chopped off by Shen Lian in the fight.
Shen Lian had previously intimidated an official while trying to find another of the eunuchs, and taken advantage of the situation to get a document that would allow him to buy the courtesan, Zhou Miaotong. He used his cut of the money to pay for Zhou Miaotong. However, it was revealed that she was deeply in love with Yan Junbin, who by then had been tortured so much that he pleaded for Shen Lian to kill him.
Shen Lian had bribed an official with lots of money on Lu Jianxing's behalf, though he was already on his way to receiving his promotion. However, the large amounts of money was very suspicoius and it put not only the other officials but also Lu Jianxing on Shen Lian's tail.
As for Yichuan, Shen Lian gave money to his shixiong, Ding Xiu, in hopes that he'd go away forever.
Shen Lian came clean to the others, and they agreed to leave, but they had to take care of things first.
Shen Lian want to collect Miaotong but she kept asking after Yan Junbin. She was also angry at Shen Lian, understandably so, as she remembered him as being part of the squad that had killed her father and forced her into the brothel. What Shen Lian had taken as romance and affection was Miaotong fearing for her life. She never loved him, she was only ever afraid of him. But Shen Lian didn't care. Even when he was attacked by guards and by Zhao Jingzhong at the brothel, he continued to protect her. When he carried her to the doctor's, she admitted that he would not be in this mess if not for her, because he wanted so badly to earn money to free her.
Lu Jianxing wanted to go to court to confess his wrongdoings before he left. He took the fall for Shen Lian, claiming that he alone had let Wei Zhongxian live, and he was eventually executed. Han Kuang, the official who'd been on the case, was the one who'd discovered that the corpse was not actually Wei Zhongxian. There was a conversation between him and the Emperor about how to deal with the remaining officials in his court. Many of them were loyal to the eunuchs, but unfortunately, the emperor knew that he couldn't kill everyone or else he'd have no one loyal to him anymore.
As for Yichuan, he'd been having a budding romance with the daughter of his doctor, Zhang Yan. Before he left, he'd gotten a message that Ding Xiu had taken them hostage. When he arrived, Doctor Zhang was already dead. Ding Xiu and Jin Yichuan fought and Jin Yichuan, who'd been nursing an illness, was about to die. Some assassins had appeared out of nowhere and they could have killed Ding Xiu but at the last second Jin Yichuan pushed him out of the way, saving him.
So at last, the only one who survived was Shen Lian, Miaotong, and Zhang Yan.
Two months later, Shen Lian and Ding Xiu were tracking down Zhao Jingzhong. I thought Ding Xiu joining forces with Shen Lian was bullshit from a story perspective but Zhou Yiwei is cool so unfortunately he gets a pass. I suspect he might be in the sequel.
It's revealed that Zhao Jingzhong has become loyal to the Manchurians, thinking that there was no hope for the Ming Dynasty. Shen Lian and Zhao Jingzhong fight and Shen Lian manages to kill him, while Ding Xiu fights the Manchurian warriors that were going to help Ding Xiu.
The movie ended with a flashback to Shen Lian, Lu Jianxing, and Jin Yichuan talking about their dreams of where they wanted to go.
I don't know if you can tell, but a lot of dramatic stuff happened in this movie in a short period of time. Again, I felt that this story was more appropriate for a drama, or even a miniseries. There were quite a few tropes but most of them could be overlooked because the action happened so fast lol.
I am iffy about the romantic subplot. I liked having Shen Lian face the fact that he was the aggressor in Miaotong's life, and that she didn't love him but was afraid of him, and that she never had positive feelings toward the embroidered guard. But I fear that she and Shen Lian will be turned into a romantic couple for real in the sequel.
In general I am surprised that a character like Shen Lian here is the protagonist, I didn't think a movie like this would be made, but this movie was from 2014, so maybe censorship wasn't quite so tight. Shen Lian had done the immoral thing of taking the bribe, and his brothers died as a result; but Zhao Jingzhong was going to kill them anyway, so maybe we're not supposed to think that Shen Lian had caused this trouble. We'll never know.
Production
I watched a very lq version of the movie lol so unfortunately I didn't get to experience the movie in its full glory lol. Mainly, it was squished and a bit blurry. But I could still tell that there was care put into the presentation.
When it comes to the embroidered guard, they must have beautiful embroidered uniforms, so at least we got that lol. But overall the colour palette of the movie was rather drab. It was dark and gray and rainy for the most part.
I did appreciate the action. None of the main actors are martial artists, and I think they mostly did a believable job, particularly Nie Yuan.
Characters
Shen Lian
Our main character. He is not completely moral though. He was cash strapped and obsessed with buying Miaotong's freedom. And when he was presented with a bribe, he took it.
He didn't come clean to his brothers until things started to get dangerous. And of course, Lu Jianxing was very angry with him. He'd sabotaged their mission and lied to them and now it was coming back to bite all of them. I don't quite know how Shen Lian feels about it. I can't say that he quite felt guilt about having taken the bribe. The movie moved way too fast for us to get a look on how he thought of his past actions. His only thought process was to deal with the problem.
With regards to Miaotong, I think he believed that he loved Miaotong, but maybe she was just someone safe that Shen Lian felt he could project his soft emotions on. We saw right from the beginning that he had no mercy when getting what he needed. And maybe Miaotong gave him a break from that. But he was blind to the fact that she just viewed him as a client, and was in love with someone else.
I do think that maybe Shen Lian felt guilty about Yan Junbin. For no reason other than that they were convenient, Yan Junbin's father was killed and he had his arm chopped off. Then he was tortured to get a confession out of something that Zhang Ying and Zhao Jingzhong had fabricated. By his end, he'd lost his sight after all the torture, and he'd asked Shen Lian to put him out of his misery.
When Shen Lian finally caught up to Jin Yichuan, who was already dead, he sobbed and apologized for his wrongdoings. Only at that point, did he have a chance to slow down and really understand how his actions had killed them. With the money, he'd raised too much attention to the brothers.
Shen Lian got revenge for his brothers by tracking down and killing Zhao Jingzhong. And afterwards, Ding Xiu told him where Miaotong and Zhang Yan were living, presumably so he could meet with them.
Shen Lian...is not a good man. He's just a man. I wouldn't say that I liked him. Maybe I would have fallen victim to the glitz of money as well, I can't say for sure. But he wasn't savvy enough to spend it properly to avoid attention to themselves. You could say that they would have died either way because even if they'd killed Wei Zhongxian, Zhao Jingzhong would have had them killed because the original order was just for capture and not for assassination, so killing the three guards would protect Zhao Jingzhong. But from Shen Lian's point of view, he did a wrong thing and he's paying for it now with the lives of his brothers.
Lu Jianxing
Jianxing was the eldest of the brothers, and he really wanted a promotion. His excuse was that his mother kept asking because his father was a Baihu rank and she wanted him to be one too. It was apparently common practice to bribe for a position and Jianxing had been dutifully paying these bribes. Otherwise, he kept out of trouble.
When Zhao Jingzhong and Zhang Ying had set up a trap to have the embroidered guards killed in the Yan family manor, Zhang Ying had said that whomever completed the task might have gotten a promotion. He expected Jianxing to jump at the opportunity, but Shen Lian had sensed something was off. Nonetheless, he was ordered so he had to go in.
Jianxing was alerted to the possibility of Wei Zhongxian being alive when he found out that Zhang Ying had been bribed with tons of money, which he didn't know about. Of course, he got really angry at Shen Lian, but their argument was cut short by Yichuan's illness acting up.
Jianxing agreed that they would all leave, though in his mind, he decided he'd take the fall. He dressed in his new promoted uniform to go to court to confess, where he admitted to letting Wei Zhongxian go for the money, though he didn't know where he was now. He was executed.
Jin Yichuan
Yichuan was the youngest. He was constantly getting blackmailed by his shixiong Ding Xiu. Apparently Yichuan had committed something bad in his past and that was what Ding Xiu was blackmailing him for. The amounts kept getting larger and larger and it was a problem for him.
He was also nursing an illness, and while seeing the doctor, he and the doctor's daughter seemed to take a liking to each other.
His problems came when Shen Lian had given Ding Xiu a huge amount of money to fuck off, but that just gave Ding Xiu a big reason to come back because now he realized Shen Lian was rich and Ding Xiu could just extort him.
When he was about to skip town, he received message that Ding Xiu had taken Doctor Zhang and Zhang Yan hostage, so he rushed over, finding Doctor Zhang dead and Zhang Yan unconscious. He fought with Ding Xiu but did not match up, especially with his illness. Yichuan fought with a dual-wield knife stance, which Ding Xiu said that their shifu never taught him. We also saw Shen Lian fighting with dual-wield knives with Zhao Jingzhong at the end, and I'm not sure if that's a clue.
At the end, Yichuan could have left Ding Xiu to die, seeing the assassins on the roof, but he saved them. My guess is that those assassins were sent by Zhao Jingzhong to kill Ding Xiu so he'd keep quiet about Zhao Jingzhong ordering Yichuan's death. It's a cycle of getting assassins to kill assassins for Zhao Jingzhong.
Zhao Jingzhong
Zhao Jingzhong was a eunuch. He was he one who tasked Shen Lian, Lu Jianxing, and Jin Yichuan to kill Wei Zhongxian. However, the actual order was just to capture him. It was Zhao Jingzhong who wanted Wei Zhongxian dead.
Wei Zhongxian was actually Zhao Jingzhong's godfather, which I suppose is how Zhao Jingzhong was able to climb to such a high position. He wanted Wei Zhongxian dead because with him out of the way, some of his power would fall to Zhao Jingzhong. He ended up killing Wei Zhongxian himself.
Anyway, Zhao Jingzhong was going to kill the three embroidered guards because they were the only ones who knew that he had ordered the kill. By the end, he was personally hunting down Shen Lian, proving himself to be a capable fighter.
After the debacle, it seemed that Zhao Jingzhong had lost his position with the court. After Shen Lian and Ding Xiu tracked him down, they found out that he was looking to defect to the Manchurians, having shaved his head in the Manchurian queue style.
Zhao Jingzhong was killed by Shen Lian in the end.
Wei Zhongxian
Wei Zhongxian was a powerful eunuch, who was wanted by the Emperor. However, Zhao Jingzhong had purposely miscommunicated the command and told the embroidered guards to kill him.
When Shen Lian got to Wei Zhongxian, Wei Zhongxian had offered him tons of cash. He knew how things worked in the corrupt Ming courts and he knew that the guards weren't paid well. Shen Lian fell for the bribe and Wei Zhongxian was let go, his servant taking his place instead.
I think Wei Zhongxian still enjoyed exerting his influence on the loose. He didn't have access to political power anymore, but he was extremely rich and money makes the world go round.
In the end, Zhao Jingzhong killed Wei Zhongxian in a fire. I assume he was killed for real this time.
Ding Xiu
Ding Xiu was Jin Yichuan's shixion who was always blackmailing him for money. The Chinese Wikipedia page for this movie has some spoilers so I think it goes into what it was that Jin Yichuan had done that was so bad but my eyes glazed over it because I didn't want to be spoiled.
Anyway, Ding Xiu got bolder and bolder, and when he found out that Shen Lian had some serious money, he was not going to let that go. Zhao Jingzhong realized that he was a pretty powerful fighter and enlisted him to kill Jin Yichuan, insisting on more money since he was going to kill his "precious" shidi.
Ding Xiu just enjoyed the power that he held over Jin Yichuan. We don't know the backstory between them but perhaps there is some resentment, as he showed surprise when Yichuan was fighting with a style he said shifu hadn't taught Ding Xiu. Ding Xiu was the stronger of the two, and even then Yichuan saved him.
Okay, so I think Ding Xiu teaming up with Shen Lian is bullshit because would Shen Lian trust Ding Xiu this much? Yes Ding Xiu was paid by Zhao Jingzhong, but Ding Xiu himself was bothering Yichuan day in and day out. I would NOT trust Ding Xiu and I'd just go on the journey alone. And what beef did Ding Xiu have with Zhao Jingzhong? Unless Zhao Jingzhong didn't pay him, I guess. But it was a job and Ding Xiu took it.
But yeah, Zhou Yiwei is just so charismatic and he made Ding Xiu into so much. He truly is a terrific actor.
Han Kuang
Han Kuang was the official responsible for the Wei Zhongxian case. He did not believe that the burnt up corpse was Wei Zhongxian, but it was Zhao Jingzhong who told him to let it go.
Han Kuang also thought it was very suspicious that Lu Jianxing had been able to pay a bribe to Zhang Ying for such a high amount of money. He was very suspicious of where the money came from, and he was already on the tail that the embroidered guards had taken money from Wei Zhongxian.
Eventually, Han Kuang got a report from the coroner that the person who'd died was far too young and couldn't have been Wei Zhongxian. It seems that Han Kuang was working directly for the Emperor's interests.
Zhou Miaotong
Miaotong was a courtesan that Shen Lian was in love with (or thought he was in love with). Shen Lian was somewhat of a gentleman, never getting to raunchy with Miaotong, and she spoke of it like a cute quirk. However, like Shen Lian, we were blind to the fact that she was a customer service worker and she was just treating Shen Lian like another client.
When Shen Lian said he'd raise money to buy her freedom, she mentioned that he wouldn't be able to raise the money or to get the document to free her, since the brothel was government run (and therefore needed official permission to release any courtesans). So she was kind of gently discouraging him.
But it only became known to Shen Lian that she had a lover when she had met with him before Shen Lian was to see her. At first I wondered if he was also a client but when she hugged him, she did look happy in a way she'd never seemed with Shen Lian, and even the Madame was shooing Yan Junbin away, knowing that they had a relationship.
Miaotong had sought Shen Lian out when she found out that Yan Junbin was captured (because of him). Shen Lian agreed to save him, seeing how worried she was, though by the time he got there, he was already so battered up and asked to be killed. When Shen Lian went to get Miaotong so they could leave, she asked if her going with him was a condition of her freedom; the way she spoke of it was very transactional, and also implying that going with him was something she had never thought of.
Miaotong explained that while he did treat her well, she never forgot the fact that she saw him when he was ransacking their house and killing her father. And that from then on, she'd always just been afraid of embroidered guards. Nonetheless, Shen Lian had protected her, perhaps trying to prove to himself that he had a heart and that he could love unconditionally.
Miaotong was grieving over Yan Junbin's death, and she wanted to die, but when Zhao Jingzhong was about to kill her, Shen Lian jumped in front of the spear. Shen Lian then took Miaotong to the doctor, and she acknowledged that if it weren't for her and the money that would be needed to free her, Shen Lian would not have been in the state that he was.
In the end, she went in hiding.
Zhang Yan
Zhang Yan was the daughter of the doctor that saw to Jin Yichuan's illness. She was bubbly and happy. She made fragrances to help with Jin Yichuan's coughs.
Ding Xiu took advantage of Jin Yichuan's feelings for her to lure him out for a final fight. Ding Xiu had knocked her unconscious, but admitted that he hadn't raped her.
She went in hiding with Miaotong at the end.
Themes
I think the general theme here was just that the Ming Dynasty was at its end. The court was insanely corrupt to the point that bribery was openly acknowledged to be normal. The movie started with introducing us to the eunuch faction that had taken over politics, and during the movie we see the mess that we get into to get rid of them. How can an emperor rule the country when there is so much infighting? You may call this regular politics, but so is the natural end of a dynasty, huh.
Overall
Like I said, this movie was just A Lot. It was very fast-paced and there was a lot to take in, but any mistakes are kind of erased from memory very quickly because of how fast the story moves. I did like the action and the great cast of actors, and I'll be watching the sequel for sure.