12-02-2012, 06:50 PM
A medieval sword swinger about the founding emperor of the Han. It's a bit intricate - lots of strategizing and traps of etiquette, plus this metaphor of weiqi (go) between the two main strategists that was cool. Anthony Wong is the blind weiqi master, which he portrays by just squinting - that's sort of lame really. The film also had this nasty tendency to jump forward and backward in time without warning, so it was easy to get lost about whether the narrative was a flashback or the present or what. And it's a tad too long.
But the negative aside, there's some great battle scenes, large scale calvary charges with lances and archers and bodies flying everywhere, an awesome drunken swordsman who kicks ass and takes names (always a personal fav) and some hardcore warrior acts of sacrifice. Swords, swords, SWORDS! The swords are funky, given that this was like 200 BCE - the blades were all chrome-y with funny patterns like a Transformer sword, but that didn't really matter as the sword fights are a lot of flying about and sufficiently bloody. It's also gorgeous - massive intricate sets, opulent costumes, panoramic vistas, massive crowd scenes and okay CGI. And it stars two friends NOT AS VILLAINS. There's Chan Koon Tai, who I had the great honor of meeting and interviewing - he actually told me about the film at that time, but he doesn't really have any lines and SPOILERcomes to a bitter endEND SPOILER, but it was a good scene. And there's Crystal Liu Yifei as the babe between the warriors. She's the perfect China doll, as always, but fails to display much acting skill, despite having a very juicy role - that was disappointing.
Greg might want to see it for the sets and Crystal. The rest of you might want to see it for the battle scenes. There's a pseudo-bollywood music scene too, so despite being a little convoluted and longwinded, I enjoyed it.
But the negative aside, there's some great battle scenes, large scale calvary charges with lances and archers and bodies flying everywhere, an awesome drunken swordsman who kicks ass and takes names (always a personal fav) and some hardcore warrior acts of sacrifice. Swords, swords, SWORDS! The swords are funky, given that this was like 200 BCE - the blades were all chrome-y with funny patterns like a Transformer sword, but that didn't really matter as the sword fights are a lot of flying about and sufficiently bloody. It's also gorgeous - massive intricate sets, opulent costumes, panoramic vistas, massive crowd scenes and okay CGI. And it stars two friends NOT AS VILLAINS. There's Chan Koon Tai, who I had the great honor of meeting and interviewing - he actually told me about the film at that time, but he doesn't really have any lines and SPOILERcomes to a bitter endEND SPOILER, but it was a good scene. And there's Crystal Liu Yifei as the babe between the warriors. She's the perfect China doll, as always, but fails to display much acting skill, despite having a very juicy role - that was disappointing.
Greg might want to see it for the sets and Crystal. The rest of you might want to see it for the battle scenes. There's a pseudo-bollywood music scene too, so despite being a little convoluted and longwinded, I enjoyed it.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse