100 Yards

The 1920s, Tianjin. Master Shen has passed on, bequeathing his martial arts academy to star apprentice Qi, instead of his own son An. Consigned to a dull if respectable bank job, An itches for a new duel with Qi to stake his claim. When Qi upsets the academy with his dubious plans for expansion, An sees an opportunity to recover lost territory.  

Directed by brothers Xu Haofeng and Xu Junfeng, 100 Yards is a stylishly kinetic wushu film that vividly recreates the situation of martial artists at a particular historical juncture in Tianjin. Popular but not yet reputable, these men and women find themselves at the threshold of legitimacy, wedged between lawless street gangs and the French colonial society that administers the district. The film sharply dramatises their dilemma: expand or lay low?

By turns an opulent period picture and a gripping gangster saga, the film is never short on pure martial-arts spectacle. Hand-to-hand combat, interspersed with passages of repose and romance, are elegantly choreographed in long shots, with clear lines of action, the gliding camera expanding and contracting the visual field at will. 100 Yards infuses classic action filmmaking with a contemporary verve.

– Srikanth Srinivasan