User Reviews

After last years' shallow, garbage extravaganza "Curse of the golden flower" that left you with only one thing to remember (the unceremoniously stuffed pseudo generously-endowed bosoms), a war epic that has real substance such as "Warlords" is a sheer delight.

With the last few years' proliferation of war epics, both on Eastern and Western screens, battle scenes that fall nothing short of stunning the audience has come to be expected or, to put it even more bluntly, taken for granted. "Warlords" certainly delivers in that department. But it's the substance that really counts.

Throughout the movies, one point has been repeatedly driven home: the gallant (or savage, whichever you prefer) fighting cannot be sustained without army provisions (or food, to be more specific). Strategies, negotiations, treacheries, betrayals in this movie all surround this one vital agenda. And more than that, starvation and poverty extend beyond the military context, to the general populace. The suffering of the helpless, powerless peasants is universal, be it in "The tale of two cities" or "Seven samurais". The three men in "Warlords", blood brothers sworn on an oath of death, all have noble goals of helping to relieve the poor of this fate. But their mentalities are different.

General Ma (Jet Li), the only survivor from the massacre of his entire army by the revolutionists seeks refuge with bandit chief Cao (Andy Lau), whom he subsequently convinces to bring the bandit camp to enlist with the government army. Ma is an almost enigmatic character that has a lofty goal but also a dark side. He is ruthless to the point of making you wonder if the price is worth paying. One may even be skeptical about his integrity but the movie seems to tend towards depicting him as more fanatic than evil. And in the end, compared with the evil cunning of those in high places, he is even naïve, as his tragic end clearly shows.

Cao is a rough-diamond type of hero who does not have Ma's lofty aspirations but has a dogged loyalty and integrity that you'll be compelled to root for. And yet he is not lily white. As a bandit chief, ravishing the conquered is a most natural part of his life, and he cannot understand why General Ma insists on public execution of his people who molested two girls. "We do that all the time," he protests. Zhang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), Cao's second-in-command seems to be the one best guided by common sense, remaining loyal to Cao and yet supporting Ma's ruthless acts for the good of the big picture. But in the end, he is the most naïve.

Director Peter Chan, who has demonstrated his artistry in a variety of genre from tender romance to dazzling musical, has done it again with a stunning war epic. The potential dramatic conflict between the three blood brothers has been crafted into scene after scene of intense emotions that carry conviction. This is Jet Li's most impressive performance in his career to-date. As if to demonstrate once more that an actor is only as good as the director, Andy Lau, who verges on looking like a clown in Zhang Yimou's pretentious "House of flying daggers", is a completely reborn actor in "Warlords". By comparison Takeshi Kaneshiro's role is less multi-dimensional, and he delivers.

This movie can do without a female lead but movie makers have to cater to commercial considerations, I imagine. The result is somewhat of a waste of lovely and talented Xu Jinglei, screen idol of China's university campus population, as well as a director and a screenwriter in her own right. In my view, the unconvincing and underdeveloped romance triangle not only does nothing to help the movie, but even takes away some of the intensity of focus.

On the question of whether one would like this film, lot of it is dependent on whether you prefer Shakespeare or Sophocles in tragedy. As in the tragedy is not character-driven, but fate-driven, if you get my drift. It is about people born into the wrong time, rather than people who make the wrong decisions. This film is strictly Sophocles, not Shakespeare. In fact, it borrows heavily off classical Greek tragedy in its structure, along with three Mandarins who act as a Chorus.

Jet Li stars as an ambitious general with Utopian ideals in late Qing China during the turbulent Taiping era. Western Colonialism was making its presence felt, and the crumbling dynasty as unable to stop it as everyone played for himself in a game of see who's the last rat to dive off the sinking ship. The Taiping Rebellion was also promising a Christian Utopia, but led by madmen every bit as fanatical as anyone that got drunk on religion will ever get, seemed like hardly an alternative.

Probably the only Chinese epic I have seen (fittingly, since its setting was the Taiping Rebellion) to have used Christian imagery, including a really bastardized retelling of the miracle of the loaves and fishes that would border on sacrilegious if taken out of context. Watch out for one scene involving a baptism pool. Beautifully done.

Visually though it is meticulous, barring some sloppy special effects here and there. The entire film feels like a Sergio Leone wetdream. Blasted heaths, wrecked buildings, windswept plains and rainy nights all combine for an atmospheric effect akin to the best Westerns that ever came out of Hollywood's Golden Age.

However, one key determinant will make or break your liking for the film. I have always preferred Shakespearean tragedy to Greek, and wonder why current Chinese filmmakers have yet to make a competent Shakespearean tragedy. (And no, I did not like THE BANQUET). And the fact that the film was classically Greek in structure and storytelling was the bit of a letdown for me. I admire its panache, its style, its storytelling, most of everything about it, except that somehow I never really engaged with the characters and their struggles.

What I feel a lot of people are missing out, or may be, is that this really the antithesis of Heroic Cinema, it is Anti-Heroic cinema. A harsh satire on the limits of principle and self-righteousness of not just Chinese rulers, but also many of the self-proclaimed "heroes" of Chinese history. Yet all of them are also prisoners of their time and culture. The characters of Kaneshiro and Lau are bandits, and as such, their moral outlook is painfully limited, to them there is only the "fellow outlaw" to be faithful to, not the people. They claim moral high ground, but instead when they rush into battle their cry is always to get rich, fed and laid: nothing more than the aspirations of a common criminal. Jet Li's character, Pang Qingyun, believes that he is faithful to the people, even if this also means killing POWs, has a claim that "in war, only winning matters!" and thus in the end is also ousted by a bloodthirsty political culture in which "only winning matters". The characters all appear to be doing right in their own eyes, but they are constricted by their society and their culture and their period into being painfully flawed figures. This is where THE WARLORDS strikes gold among recent Chinese epics. It may be read as a rebuttal to what appears as character in history, but is really sanctimony, and perhaps strikes at the heart of the fact that all heroic narratives are written by the victors, and therefore all heroic narrative is inherently sanctimonious.

PS And is it just me, or does everyone want to borrow off Hans Zimmer's score for GLADIATOR now?

Could be too much competition among screenplay writers, I mean there are 8 writers mentioned on IMDb for this movie - actually we can see more writers then actors here. Could be, they just didn't cooperate that well... The general idea is good, makes lots of sense, three people swear loyalty to each other, but one is ready to sacrifice the pledge and to kill anybodybody who stands in his way, to fulfill his dream. Still the script doesn't hold, sth is wrong, audience get confused: what's going on with this girl? what was it with court machinations? I had this feeling, maybe each writer had his own agenda and tried to convert the audience during the short sequence he was assigned to... Another huge problem is the cast. There is sth really misplaced there. Jet Lee should not be the main hero here, he can be truly great as a particular kind of hero(a rather simple and silent one) but there is no way he could adjust himself to play a very complicated character. Andy Lau on the other hand is very good - only, he doesn't have that much to do. Still he does his best and somehow holds the story together even though the character he plays is a bit, well, underwritten (script again, sigh...) And of course big thumbs up (is not yet copyrighted, is it ;) for Kaneshiro Takeshi, with the same complain: I so much wish he had more to play. Jinglei Xu doesn't have much to do

• so she doesn't. Music, SIGH... one part (I think around the battle of Suzhou?) it was actually sth like the Pirates of Caribbean; apart from that rather funny piece you mostly get sort of generic holywoodish "War and Love" tunes (fortunately interrupted with a kind of Beijing Opera). Still is not a totally bad movie, cinematography is excellent, there is a bit of decent acting (two bits ;) very good fighting choreography and impressive costumes.

Two's a company and three's a crowd. In movieland, that is almost always true, with no black and white, but with shades of grey instead. Of late, period or martial chivalry movies either look aesthetically beautiful like Zhang Yimou's trilogy of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, or opt for the grittier, more down to earth look with plenty of dirt and grime like Battle of Wits. Director Peter Chan's The Warlords follows the latter with its strained colors and muck on everyone's face, in parallel of the grey that befalls everyone in this tale of a trio's struggles with the System, and amongst themselves.

Those who are familiar with stories featuring similar themes like brotherly bonds, blood brothers and the likes, will find that The Warlords, when striped away to its core, conforms to the same. But what Peter Chan did, and I thought succeeded, was to fuse really hard core battle action sequences with character driven drama, and having the stellar leads of Andy Lau, Jet Li and Takeshi Kaneshiro play something quite unlike their usual on screen personae, well, except maybe Kaneshiro. Publicity talk has been rife of Jet Li's unbelievable pay package taking up almost 40% of the production cost, but if that was true, I'd guess it must've been a reward to take on something risky (to a screen idol that is), and as it turned out, it could instead be a career defining role for Li, who doesn't get as much opportunity to show off those slick martial arts moves, no doubt in part wanting to stick the movie as close to reality as possible (bye, shawdowless kick!)

Li opens the movie as a disgraced general Ma Xin Yi, who was betrayed and only survived a massacre of his troops by the cowardly act of playing dead (Yes! Jet Li, playing a coward, pretending to be dead! Told you!) In his quest to survive incognito, he chances upon a bandit Zhang Wen Xiang, played by Kaneshiro, who acknowledges General Ma's fighting prowess, and recruits him to the gang of Lau's Cao Er-Hu. However, the bandit life is not for a man of war, who sees the poor bandit village getting their arses kicked when soldiers of a rival court raid them, and thus finds the catalyst to encourage the bandit men to draw salary and food, by joining the army. Suspicious and needing assurance of the General, the trio of Ma, Zhang and Cao sign a blood oath, and thus the blood brothers are born - one a charismatic leader, one a general looking to reclaim his honour, and one in every bonding, the earnest and faithful follower.

As the story unfolds, you begin to see how de-facto leaders always feel threatened by young upstarts, both in the politics within the small band of brothers, and in the bigger picture with the court officials. With individuals, there's almost always a clash of ideals, with many methods available in achieving common objectives, and one man's insatiable ambition will put the others at risk in Machiavellian terms. Finding themselves stronger in unity, repeated success on the battlefield start to change folks and reveal true intentions. Even the rule of law established becomes subject to interpretation based on the moment's convenience, and core principles like honour and gentlemen's agreement get tossed out of the window. As innermost desires are revealed, you'll begin to see how seriously or not, the blood oath is being treated by each individual, especially when one finds the other being externally threatened, or betrayal of temptation in the highest order courtesy of female lead Xu Jinglei's Lian as the token flower amongst the thorns.

However, the story bore strength in its presentation of key moments where you'll be called upon to question and even judge the characters, their decisions, and at times, forced to choose sides. You may be convinced by one argument, yet understand the necessity of why something else was done instead. And I'd think you'll probably won't stick to one side for the most parts, and such bringing out the shades of grey that you'll experience for yourself, if you happen to be in the shoes of the trio's foot soldiers. Naivety is truly unkind, and sometimes one is just a pawn in situations far beyond one's grasp, and you can see how this rings true for almost every character here.

While it is easy to dwell on the battle sequences and make this one heck of an action romp in the veins of 300 (ok, so this one had its "108 heroes" moment in a nod towards probable upcoming Water Margin movies), which it did look to suspiciously tread along the same vein, I thought the filmmakers here were smart to know when to show gore, with the decapitations, piercings and the likes, to knowing when to retract such in your face moments for maximum effect. In the hands of a lesser director, perhaps a key brutal scene will mean to show the obvious full frontal, but in showing you something else instead, with focus on individual reactions and the reactions of compatriots at one point in time, I thought it achieved a more powerful effect, with the audience I'm with tonight completed dumbfounded and silent throughout the scene.

A remake of sorts of Shaw Brothers' Ci Ma some 35 years ago (directed by Chang Cheh and starring David Chiang, Ti Lung and Chen Kuan Tai in the lead roles), Peter Chan has brought to us a worthy Chinese epic movie with lavish production values, and one deserving of being called a magnificent effort. And yes, this deserves a watch in seeing who's actually playing who, and with a stellar cast to boot, I don't see why not. Highly recommended!

I finally saw this movie. I thought of giving it a miss when I see the trailer with scenes of messy action(like Chat Gim) and Andy's poor acting scenes. But then, I was curious as it compared to the original Blood Brothers. Friends said it was not that bad and the box office success in HK told me that it can't be as bad as Tsui Hark's last wuxia Seven Swords.

Compared to Blood Brothers(70s) the director gave this movie more budget and grand, a bigger scale story with war and politics thrown in, while the original simply concentrated on the well drafted 2 triangular affairs .

Briefly and as usual, I will just highlight the flaws. I am sure praises and pleases are already in abundant.

a) The opening intro did not make the opening and action scenes clear. Those without knowledge of Chinese history may find the opening confusing.

b) In the scene when Jet Li has part of a spear pierced through his shoulder, it is not straight.

c) Near the end when Jet Li got his men to trick Andy for a meeting to assassinate him and Takeshi tried to save him, the audience don't understand their direction and locations.

d) The most serious flaw in the movie is the script on the triangular affair. In olden Chinese days, a wife don't get to leave his house without the husband knowing and consent. Here, we see the female lead left the house twice when the husband just came home from far and it was not shown or explained or how the husband could not know about it.

e) The wife affair with Jet Li was also non-logical. The first time, the lady approached him(in bed) and when they can meet again, Let Li avoided him by staying out of the village. The lady ran all the way to look for him but turn back when he found his main door closed(not logic). Yet, the 3rd time they met, it's Jet Li's turn to go after her while she tried to run away. Their affairs just don't seems logic. The plot will be more convincing if it showed either one party had been more persistent all the way.

f) As usual, Andy Lau can never act well. Out of the 3, he has the most flaws, especially in scenes when he is supposed to act fierce and strong. His facial expression gave way and looks comical. Surprisingly Takeshi turned out the best.

Overall the movie is still worth a few dollars and 2 hours. Remind me of the rubbish Seven Swords(Chat Gim) but this is far better in action, acting, script, story and direction.