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. 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. 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.
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. In movieland, that is almost always true, with no black and white, but with shades of grey instead. Reviewed by DICK STEEL 10 / 10 A Nutshell Review: The Warlords The political and emotional stakes will be tested, leading to differences between the blood brothers.-Sonja Pavkovic Their stunning military successes impress the governing powers, but as Qingyun's influence begins to grow, they soon fear him. Qingyun convinces his two new comrades to form a loyalist army unit to fight the rebels and feed their own people. Wuyang introduces him to his "big brother", who also happens to be Liansheng's husband, Zhao Erhu and Qingyun begins to assist them with their raids.
With his strength regained, Qingyun impresses one of the village bandit leaders, Jiang Wuyang, with his fighting skills. He encounters a starving village, whose inhabitants engage in banditry to survive, where he is nursed back to health by the attractive Liansheng. Loyalist General Qingyun is the only survivor of a battle with anti-Qing rebels. Set in China in the 1860's during the Taiping Rebellion, the story is based on the assassination of Ma Xinyi in 1870.
0 kommentar(er)
