Swordsman II

The second story of "Saber Song" is much more impressive than the first. As the main characters, it casts Wong Man Ho, Ho Mei Tin, Lam Wai, and Kung Ti Yun, weaving together an interesting tale with love as a focus. A complicated relationship between the four main characters is unfolded and the script storytelling is done quite well.

The story follows that Gong Fei Wan (Wong Man Ho), under his see-fu's, or master's, last wishes, is to challenge Mui Gno Xue in a battle to determine finally who and which will win--the sword or the saber. Mui Gno Xue, the older brother of Gong's see-fu, Mui Gno Suern, however, is believed to be already dead and buried in the mountains behind Ting Sing Mountain. Gong Fei Wan leaves and buries his saber in his master's grave, never to use it again. Finally returning home for the first time in years, Gong Fei Wan finds out that his father had settled a marriage for him with Lin Sin (Ho Mei Tin) of the Lin Family. Gong agrees to the marriage to appease his father but soon finds out on his wedding night that the bride is unwilling and that the Lin Family had been threatened to give up Lin Sin for marriage. The plot progresses further from this starting point.

Up until this series, I've never been much appreciative of Wong Man Ho's acting--although he portrayed his role quite well in "The Bodyguard". Wong is surprisingly convincing as the seemingly cold and proud Gong Fei Wan. Ho Mei Tin is also notable in this series, perhaps even more so than her recent role in "Fong Si Yuk." Ho's acting seemed to have improved a lot since her performance in TVB's "State of Divinity" though she still needs to work on speaking dialogues. In "Saber", her voice was dubbed and was a bonus to her performance.

The second part of "Saber" is rather short, lasting only 10 episodes, in that an episode is very detailed with much plot movement. The romance between the main couple is set up very nicely. It is also good in the sense that the lines of good and evil were not drawn out clearly between the characters but the ending two episodes were somewhat dragging.