Ashes of Time (1994)

Ashes of Time (Chinese: 東邪西毒; pinyin: Dōngxié xidú; literally: "Eastern Heretic, Western Poison") is a 1994 Hong Kong film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, and loosely based on four characters from Jin Yong's novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes.

Wong completely eschews any plot adaptation from the novel, using only the names to create his own vision of an arguably unrelated film. During the film's long-delayed production, Wong produced a parody of the same novel with the same cast titled The Eagle Shooting Heroes.

Although it received limited box office success, the parallels Ashes of Time drew between modern ideas of dystopia imposed on a wuxia film has led many critics to cite it as one of Wong Kar-wai's most under-appreciated works.

Due to the original prints being lost Wong re-edited and re-scored the film in 2008 for future theater, DVD and Blu-ray releases under the title Ashes of Time Redux. The film was reduced from 100 to 93 minutes. Both the original and Redux versions can still be found on Asian markets, while only the Redux version is available to western markets. Several criticisms of the Redux version have been noted, such as poor image quality and color mastering from the source material, cropping and removal of portions of the bottom image, poor English translations, and the re-scoring.

Synopsis

In this film, set in ancient times in China, Leslie Cheung plays an agent, Ouyang Feng, hiring famous bounty hunters. His character is portrayed as a fallen swordsman driven by greed and heartless to both friend and foe. He was perpetually being spiteful of love as his own love history was not nearly so beautiful. His bounty-hunters came and went as was narrated by Ouyang Feng himself as based on the Tung Shu predictions.

Actors