Arch, stylized and production designed to the nth degree, “100 Yards” is a sort of ramen noodles martial arts Western.

With their harmonica and guitar backed score, sibling filmmakers Hoafeng Xu and Jenfung Xu lean into Leone — Sergio, that is — and his spaghetti Western style with this parable about the rituals and arcane practices of Chinese martial arts academies into the 1920s.

In the anarchic China of the Western-dominated years before WWII, before communist “order” became the rule of the day, cities like Tianjin had thug and bully problems. But martial arts academies, and their students, kept the peace within 100 yards of their front gate. A “circle” of such academies, ruled by committee and dedicated to a rigid and arcane code, might ensure merchants at the market and other swathes of town could be peaceful enough for the locals to do business without hassles.

Whatever the truth, that’s the way this “universe” is set up.

An old master ordains that his best pupil, Quan (Andy On) should “duel” his son, An (Jacky Heung) to see who will inherit his academy.

Quan bests An, who has to decide if he’s going to accept that result or pursue the banking career his now-dead father urged him into. It should be an easy choice, Quan figures.

“Everyone wants to pick a fight to see how tough you are,” he advises (in Mandarin with English subtitles). “Do you really want that kind of life?”

There’s a woman (Bea Hayden Kuo) connected with the bank who offers An a future family. But damned if the imperious, imperialist foreign bankers don’t want to see their clerk fight. An consents, and then quits. The gauche Frenchmen and women have offended his honor.

Thus begins a movie-long quest to have a do-over, to re-fight Quan and perhaps change the order of The Circle of martial arts academies, whose tough-broad, short-haired chairwoman (Yuan Li) dresses in men’s suits and rules by being cooler and sexier than anyone within 100 yards of her.

There are ruffians for hire who enforce their own law — with slingshots — who figure to have a say in all this.

And the two combatants get in each other’s heads by hinting at a mythic “fourth fist fight form” that the old master may have taught one. Or the other.

Might it involve “short sabres?”

The film is a series of set-piece fights involving such sabres, and swords and sticks and fists and feet — sometimes blocked with curved wooden forearm shields.

The entire affair looks movie musical unreal, soundstage-clean, from fancy restaurants and bank dining rooms to spotless walled streets, cleaned and covered in red sand for one thrown-down.

It’s a world of double-breasted suits, fedoras and bowlers and tuxes and white gloves. Wait, China gave up all this for communism?

The movie is both too stylized and cinematic to feel real and lived-in, and not stylized enough to play as “mythic.” It’s watchable between the well-staged and beautifully choreographed brawls, but only barely.

The leads are charismatic enough. But the dialogue is stiff and stentorian, with edicts about how “martial artists marry other martial artists” and the like.

When it works it’s pretty cool. But it’s dull enough between fights that I had time to ponder the great mystery of these cinematic “academies” with their marching legions of fist-foot-way fighters and Broadway-worthy choreography, depicted in martial arts movies from Bruce Lee to Jet Li, Donnie Yen and beyond.

What, exactly, is their business model? How can they feed and house and train and cover healthcare (injuries are common) costs for their “students?” What’s the going rate for minions to a martial arts master?

With or without red ink, rich benefactors or government tax breaks, the martial arts academy of “100 Yards” is worth fighting for when there’s a throwdown, and not so much as we stagger towards the umpteenth renewal of this battle for supremacy without a real “hero” to root for.

Rating: unrated, martial arts violence

Cast: Jacky Heung, Andy On, Bea Hayden Kuo, Shiyi Tang and Yuan Li.

Credits: Directed by
Haofeng Xu and Jenfung Xu, scripted by
Haofeng Xu. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:48