The Legend of the Swordsman (1992)

Best known in English as Swordsman II Brigitte Lin's Dongfang Bubai, a master who has paid a terrible price for a sacred scroll's power and whom the hero mistakes for a woman, is one of the most mesmerizing villains in the genre. Ching Siu-tung directs and Tsui Hark produces this loose adaptation of Jin Yong's The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, with Jet Li as a carefree swordsman caught between sects. The fights are pure early-1990s Hong Kong excess, with bodies flung across the frame at impossible angles, and it won Best Action Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards. It stands on its own without the 1990 first film.