Synopsis:
Guan Yu, a legendary general during the The Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, is a captive of enemy Cao Cao's forces and must fight on their side. When Guan decides to leave and return to his master Liu Bei, fearing that they will have to face Guan in combat, Cao's general's send out an order for Guan Yu to be killed. Easier said than done.
I'd been looking
forward to this for a while. I hadn't quite found the effort to sit
through another Dynasty Warriors film (that's right, I'm calling them
that) after John Woo's Red Cliff, a film based on the Battle
of Chi Bi in Luo Guanzong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Red Cliff was a long film, and I don't mind telling you it's not
worth sitting through three hours of it as I'm never going to watch
it again and so it will never get reviewed here. Frankly, it stank,
the action wasn't particularly well crafted and I didn't enjoy it at
all, very very labouring . Then along came the Lost Bladesman, and
who's headlining. Only Donnie Yen!! If you've seen his other work
you'll know what a capable martial arts star this guy is. I was
excited to see this man bring his prowess to the romanticised and
brutally violent world that I grew up adoring as I played my way
through the Dynasty Warriors computer games.
But instead what do I
get? Another drawn out, fairly dull film with only a few sequences
saving it from a one star review. For nearly a full hour I was
getting more and more worried as I waited for something to happen.
There was a half arsed 'large-scale' battle at the beginning which
set up the film poorly and I was worried I was going to have to sit
through two hours of cavalry fight scenes, a pet peeve of mine. But
that soon finished, appearing only to be some kind of introduction, I
guess, it was hard to tell where the beginning, middle and end was. I
suppose getting away from the large scale battles could be considered
a good thing, except nothing happened for a long time. A very
long time.
Suddenly a fight scene kicked
in, out of nowhere, and to be fair, it was magnificent! It was fast, flawlessly choreographed and despite it being in a confined space,
you could see everything. This is stuff Donnie Yen was born to do.
Whether its one-on-one or even battling against multiple enemies, if you
want a good fight scene, hire this man, because he'll take it to the
next level. Just don't faff around putting him on a horse! My hopes
were up and I was ready for the rest of the film, which churned out a
few good fight scenes in a row. The battle with Meng Han and his
guards could have utilised better cinematography and lighting but for
the most part it was there.
However, the film then
plodded to a stop and it was moving far too slowly again. I
kind of felt half full, like I'd been teased with the possibility and
a great second half, only to be left hungry for more. There was a
brief spurt at the end but nothing to compete with the earlier
fights, and then the film ends fairly abruptly. Guan Yu (Donnie) has
a little spat with the emperor and we cut twenty years ahead to his
funeral. Meh.
Although I moaned about
the slow paced nature of the film, far too slow in my opinion, there
was a lot of interesting dialogue. Old proverbs, and witty
conversations were flowing abundantly, but for some reason it didn't
help it move quicker which is a real shame. Perhaps in shorter bursts
the poetic nature of the dialogue would have been more interesting
but instead it felt like it kept stalling potentially brilliant
martial arts masterpieces.
Overview:
Great action and
beautiful dialogue, just in the wrong amounts. There needed to be
more action, less talking. I guess it'll be up to me to one day
direct a decent Dynasty Warriors movie. With such fantastical
characters and epic events, how can it be so hard to get The Three
Kingdoms right!?
Rating:
★★
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