01-29-2008, 12:49 AM
Forget War. Just forget it. It didn't happen. Jet made Fearless, and then he made Warlords. War was Statham and some Chinese guy that looked a lot like Jet. They all look the same, you know. Warlords is Jet, still pushing the edge of the envelope in his own maverick way. It's a gritty film. The horrors of war. Moaning bodies on the battlefield. Flying limbs and spitting blood. Refugees in walking for miles in the dust. Trees without leaves. Medieval trench warfare. Fields of bodies. Horses taking some big falls - Animals were harmed in this production. Rough hempen clothes and heavy armor. Fighting in snow, rain and mud. No make up, just roll around in the muck before each scene. The sets are huge and almost all sepia, black and white. Some shots echo vintage Chinese dramas. The heroes start out drained and spiral downward from there. I don't care for Andy Lau that much but he was good here. So was Takeshi Kaneshiro. It aspires to be a Shakespearean epic, parsed with big battle scenes. It echoes Kurosawa. There's some fine fight scenes - don't mess with Jet or SPOILERhe'llpullandexcaliburupyourspearandtakeyoureffingheadEND SPOILER.
But here's the kicker - Jet's acting totally outshines his martial arts. It's his best acting perfomance to date. He plays well off the other two actors - the bulk of the film is talk in each other's face, then big battle, then talk in each other's face, then another big battle. The big battles are great but they don't culminate in a finale fight. Jet tears it up early but the martial action succumbes later to dramatic stuff. The ending is predictable, but felt satisfying. I'm eager to see it in English to get a better sense of the drama of it. Also, it'd be great on a big screen because of some massive down and dirty battle scenes. It's not as deep as Hero, nor as martial as Fearless (after all, that was his last martial arts film), nor as slimy as Danny the Dog (extra points for Bob Hoskins, of course), but it's definitely interesting Asian cinema. I doubt it's a DOOM flick because it's so depressing, moreso than Casshern. This is not a happy feel good film - Jet seems to have given up on that back at Cradle 2 Grave. But it worked for me. I'm not sure it'll work for everyone.
But here's the kicker - Jet's acting totally outshines his martial arts. It's his best acting perfomance to date. He plays well off the other two actors - the bulk of the film is talk in each other's face, then big battle, then talk in each other's face, then another big battle. The big battles are great but they don't culminate in a finale fight. Jet tears it up early but the martial action succumbes later to dramatic stuff. The ending is predictable, but felt satisfying. I'm eager to see it in English to get a better sense of the drama of it. Also, it'd be great on a big screen because of some massive down and dirty battle scenes. It's not as deep as Hero, nor as martial as Fearless (after all, that was his last martial arts film), nor as slimy as Danny the Dog (extra points for Bob Hoskins, of course), but it's definitely interesting Asian cinema. I doubt it's a DOOM flick because it's so depressing, moreso than Casshern. This is not a happy feel good film - Jet seems to have given up on that back at Cradle 2 Grave. But it worked for me. I'm not sure it'll work for everyone.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse