Last Hurrah for Chivalry: Long Live Chivalric Brotherhood

In a chapter of his Records of the Grand Historian, from the first century BCE, Sima Qian provides the first written account of the historical youxia. Sima honors the youxia as China’s original martial promise keepers, who were willing to fight for justice and go so far as to sacrifice their own lives to fulfill their promises. In short, they were always true to their word. Their willingness to use violence as a last resort was anathema to Confucianism, which prioritized the cultivation of cultural refinement and relegated to the state the exclusive right to exercise violence. The resulting Confucian orthodoxy, in which scholars disdained and surpassed generals, spanned more than two thousand years, starting with the Han dynasty in 202 BCE and ending with the abdication of the Qing dynasty in 1912. Soldiers served the state, and there was no place for individual warriors such as the youxia. During this extended imperial period, stories of the youxia were suppressed for fear of inspiring the peasantry to overthrow the emperor. Accounts of the youxia were also censored in Communist China, since they were viewed as unwanted feudal legacies of the pre-Communist past.

It was through the figures of Chang (Wai Pak) and Tsing Yi (Damian Lau), the dual protagonists of Last Hurrah for Chivalry, that Woo first established his interpretation of this legacy: the chivalric brotherhood of the sword that occurs when each youxia recognizes in the other his adherence to the highest ideals. This brotherhood surpasses all other possible human relationships because of its rarity, the thrill that is gained when it is formed, and its ephemeralness, since during battle the outcome is always unknown. Most important, the youxia brotherhood is shown to be something worth sacrificing one’s own life for—an ethos demonstrated at the very end of Last Hurrah for Chivalry, when Tsing Yi shoves Chang away from the falling Moonlight Sword only to be impaled by it himself. For Tsing Yi, this is the most honorable way to die.

This interpretation of idealized youxia brotherhood continues in Woo’s later gun-fu films, especially in The Killer (1989), but also in A Better Tomorrow (1986), A Better Tomorrow II (1987), Just Heroes (1989), Bullet in the Head (1990), Once a Thief (1991), and Hard Boiled (1992). These are the films that brought Woo international acclaim and inspired even Hollywood action directors to adopt his gunplay flourishes. Those who recognize the look of a John Woo action film will focus on the use of double firearms, graceful ballistic shoot-outs, Mexican standoffs, back-to-back poses by the protagonists as they face overwhelming odds, cool sunglasses and trench coats, flying doves, and religious interior settings as recurring motifs. Though many of these stylistic hallmarks are evident in the larger-scale films that Woo would go on to make in the U.S., the youxia ideal is not. Woo’s radical Hollywood transformation is most apparent in Face/Off (1997), where a brotherhood of opposites is an impossibility, with the FBI agent commanding his underground nemesis to die—a complete reversal of how Last Hurrah for Chivalry ends.

This youxia brotherhood matters even more since there are many who purport to be youxia but fail to adhere to the sacred secular promise that a youxia must make. Moreover, since the youxia ethos is widely known, unscrupulous individuals might set up scenarios to secure a youxia promise for unheroic ends. In Last Hurrah for Chivalry, the scholar Kao (Lau Kong) personifies such a bastardization of this ethos, willingly using money, manipulative stratagems, a magic sword, and betrayal as valid means to justify his ultimate goal of becoming a false youxia. While Kao begins the film celebrating his status as the son of a renowned youxia, he has neither the skills nor the will to become one himself. Kao’s lack of fighting ability becomes apparent in the opening scene, when Pak (Lee Hoi-sang) and his henchmen attack the villa where his wedding is underway, as a continuation of their family feud. Kao thus must charm Chang to exact his revenge against Pak, using his wealth to purchase expensive medicine for Chang’s ill mother and, upon her death, covering her funeral expenses. Not being manipulative himself, Chang is unable to realize that Kao views him as an ultimately expendable mercenary. Chang’s true youxia equal exists only in Tsing Yi, a wine aficionado who sells his sword for hire and feels deeply for those he has killed. It is Tsing Yi’s reconnaissance of Pak’s villa, entourage, and strategy that provides the youxia pair a chance at success. Meanwhile, Kao does not hesitate to kill his bride when she attempts to kill him; to murder his martial-arts master and steal his magic sword; and to kill the family servant who finally refuses to assist his vile endeavors any further.