By the Sword
Alexander Villard is a former fencing champion who runs a highly competitive fencing school. One of his students describes him as "a freak who thinks he's living in the fourteenth century".
Max Suba is an ex-convict who introduces himself as a fencing instructor. Villard initially gives him a job as a janitor. With time, Suba recovers his lost form and shows that he can fence. Villard has Suba spar with an ambitious student to demonstrate a point. Villard is "arrogant but not unkind", and eventually gives Suba a chance to teach, assigning him the beginning students.
While Villard takes a ruthless approach, encouraging a student to injure an opponent to win, Suba takes a subtler approach, encouraging students to turn their own weaknesses into strengths. Following this advice, one of Suba's beginning level students scores against Villard's prize fencer during an in-school competition. Flashbacks further develop the conflict by revealing how Suba had killed Villard's father in a fencing duel. The film climaxes in a dramatic duel between Villard and Suba.
cult, action, revenge