- "The perpetrator of crimes ... Shall not escape horrible death."
The Jade Raksha is a 1968 Shaw Brothers Wuxia film directed by Ho Meng-hua, starring Cheng Pei-Pei who at that time is at the peak of her popularity from Come Drink With Me.
In a small town of a Tang Dynasty-era village, every night a mysterious lady sings a mournful song of vengeance, and every morning, the heads of members of the Yen Family, a ruling clan dominating the surrounding villages, will be found hanging on flagpoles or balconies of buildings. Villagers are terrified, and the rumours of a vengeful, murderous banshee spreads amongst the townfolks... the legend of the Jade Raksha.
Little does anyone know, the Jade Raksha isn't a banshee, but a human; the sole survivor of a clan war decades ago, between the Yen family and Leng family, where the Leng family gets massacred entirely, leaving behind Leng Chiu Han (Cheng Pei-pei), a little girl who witnessed her parents' death while narrowly escaping with her life, and have trained herself for years to become a swordswoman, assassin, and avenging angel. Now, her quest of vengeance is almost complete, and the only person stopping her is Xu Ying Hao, another swordsman hired to protect the last survivor of the Leng clan.
The Jade Raksha provides the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Leng, the titular Jade Raksha.
- Arc Words: Spoken by Swordsman Xu."When is revenge, justice and when is it not?"
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Between Leng and Xu, against loads and loads of mooks in the Yen mansion's dungeon.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Master Yen Tian Long, the last member of the Yen clan, who masquerades as a philanthropist to the poor, but is secretly running a smuggling and kidnapping organization and have manipulated clan wars and is indirectly responsible for hundreds of deaths.
- Bootstrapped Leitmotif: The Jade Raksha's theme. Bonus points that it was Leng herself who sings it, every time, to announce her arrival to her enemies before killing them.
- Dance Battler: Leng's fighting moves resembles ballet dances. Much like Michelle Yeoh after her, Cheng Pei-pei was an accomplished dancer before becoming an actress.
- Decapitation Presentation: Right in the opening scene we see the heads of Yen family leaders removed by the Jade Raksha being hung from flagpoles.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Leng can throw knives with deadly accuracy, even taking down three thugs fleeing away from her by throwing three knives in one fell swoop.
- Murder by Mistake: Swordsman Xu's introduction scene had him seeking revenge for his father and confronting a drunken martial artist whom he assumed to be his father's killer. One Single-Stroke Battle later, Xu kills his opponent, only to have his opponent's wife and children run out crying, at which point he found out from the wife that he killed the wrong person; his father's killer have died a year ago and his victim just happens to have the same name. Xu ends up swearing off violence and welding his sword into its scabbard.
- Mysterious Veil: Leng, when disguised as the Jade Raksha, wears a face-concealing veil.
- Off with His Head!: The Jade Raksha, after killing members of the Yen clan, would remove their heads to be displayed in the public.
- One Woman Army: Leng, who can take on more than 20 thugs at once and emerge unscathed. By the end of the movie she claimed a kill-count of nearly a hundred people.
- Our Banshees Are Louder: The Jade Raksha is initially assumed to be one, until later being revealed to be a human all along.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Swordsman Xu and the Jade Raksha. They may be an effective Battle Couple, but by the end of the movie they're just warriors who just happens to work as a team.
- Protagonist Title: Protagonist nickname's title, to be precise.
- Red Baron: Leng is The Jade Raksha.
- Revenge: The titular Jade Raksha seeks this, to avenge her entire family wiped out in a clan war decades ago.
- Roofhopping: A pretty standard wuxia trademark, this movie had the Jade Raksha leaping from roof-to-roof while enemy mooks futilely tries to pursue her from ground level.
- Ruling Family Massacre: The Leng family, whose entire bloodline is wiped out as result of a clan war. As for the Raksha herself, see below.
- Sole Survivor: Leng, the Jade Raksha, is the only member of the Leng family still alive from the clan war decades ago.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Leng the Jade Raksha and Xu the swordsman aren't on the same side, but when they realize they're facing a common enemy they end up working as a team.
- Underground Level: Much of the climatic finale takes place in the dungeons hidden beneath the Yen mansion.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Master Yen may be secretly a tyrant, but he does actively participate in charities, such as delivering food to the poor and funding building projects for the villagers. In fact Master Yen's introduction scene had him ordering his servants to distribute rice to the townsfolk, misleading the audience into thinking he's not the villain after all... before revealing his murder dungeon immediately 3 minutes later.
- Wire Fu: Used constantly throughout the film. At one point in the climax Leng have to cross a wide chasm, where she then hacks down a bamboo tree, uses it as a pole vault... and somehow flies some 30 meters horizontally from one end of the chasm to another!
