SnoopyStyle
By 1861, the Christian Taiping Rebellion from its capital Nanking has conquered half of Imperial China. The corrupt Ching court orders General Pang Qingyun (Jet Li) to join with General Ho in an attack on the rebels. General Ho is a corrupt powerful leader. He withdraws his forces and lets Pang's men be massacred. Pang escapes by pretending to be dead. Jiang Wuyang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Zhao Erhu (Andy Lau) leads a local militia. Zhao Erhu is unwilling to take in Pang and then General Ho's men confiscate provisions from them. The three men join in a blood oath to lead a loyalist militia to battle the rebels all the way to Nanking. Qingyun has an affair with Erhu's wife Liansheng laying the seed for their destruction by Ho and the corrupt court.There are tons of rooting interest problems. There is a main villain in Ho and a bunch of little villains in the court. Yet the three heroes never fight against them. They fight rebels who are perfectly honorable, by the movie's own notions. In fact, the Taiping commander does the most selfless act in the entire movie. This makes the big battles not much fun. The audience is forced to root for commanders working for Darth Vader. This is essentially a Greek tragedy and the movie should know that. It tries to be an action adventure war movie and that only highlights its tonal problems. Jet Li's character is terribly flawed in so many ways. This should be Shakespearian, not Michael Bay.
Tweekums
Set in the nineteenth century when civil war plagues China one man Pang Qingyun, survives an overwhelming rout after a supposedly allied army stands by and does nothing. After the battle he is taken to a bandit village which is soon attacked by the very army that stood by earlier. He persuades the village leader, Zhao Er-Hu, and his brother to join an army and fight for the people. At first things go well for them and they are successful; they also stand for justice; then they decide that the city of Suzhou must be taken before going on to take Nanking. They think it will take three years but it is five years before Suzhou falls and when it does they are low on food and a rival army is already heading towards Nanking. Pang orders the execution of four thousand captured soldiers even though Ur-Hu promised that they would be spared if the city surrendered. They continue and take Nanking but their friendship is over and Pang is given the governorship of the city by the Empress. The problem is other lords want him to get rid of Er-Hu first.I hadn't heard of this film before seeing it advertised on television; I decided to watch it as I assumed it would be similar to other Chinese films I'd seen such as 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' or 'Hero'; I was wrong about that as the action here was far more realistic; no running up walls or flying across the roof tops here. The battle scenes were still very dramatic though and there was a degree of stylised choreography in the fighting which added to the excitement. I thought actors Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro did good jobs although not speaking Mandarin I can't comment on their accents! While I wouldn't call this a must see film it wasn't bad and is worth watching on television.
Paul Celano (chelano)
This is a very powerful movie full of emotion, but there is one problem that held it back. It was the story. The movie was almost 2 hours and it still was rushed. Scenes would go by too fast or it would skip to another scene and you didn't feel like the one before it was complete. A rushed story can really ruin a movie. Some things did save the film though. The cast for one thing. Jet Li was great and had somewhat of an evil side to him. Now this is not an action packed movie, so don't expect to see Jet Li go wild. But there is one scene in the beginning where he fights and it is pretty intense. He makes a blood brother pack with Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Andy Lau is probably the actor who showed the most emotion. One scene he was so full of emotion, you couldn't cut it with a knife. Takeshi Kaneshiro was more of the young hot shot and near the end finally grows up. Xu Jinglei plays the love interest of Jet Li and Andy Lau. She was also a pleasure to watch. So again, the film was full of emotion and some of the camera angles plus the visuals were really intense. I just really wish the story was more solid and they really could of had something here.
Ismaninb
Warlords is a fascinating and great, sometimes shocking but not perfect story of the rise and fall of General Peng. The central theme consists of his political ambitions and how they conflict with the required loyalty to his blood brothers. General Peng has to make some nasty choices and they don't turn out well. As far as I know, but I am not an expert, this is Jet Li's finest role: enigmatic, brave, ambiguous, with questionable values. My main objection against Chinese movies of this kind is that they lack character development, but that does not apply to Warlords. Jet Li manages to stir up mixed feelings until the very last scene. If you thought you had seen it all regarding battle scenes Warlords will give you a surprise. Both the ambush and the great battle scene will pop your eyes out. There is no trace of romanticism, the cruelty of warfare is pictured in every detail without becoming gory. There are also a few great special effects, like when General Peng saves the life of one of his blood brothers. The key scene takes place after the Siege of Suzhou. The question arises: what to do with the 4000 prisoners? The dilemma is unsettling and here it becomes clear that things will definitely go wrong, for all three of the blood brothers. Warlords paints a grim picture of the Chinese civil wars in the 19th Century and the dirty politics involved. The result is of epic dimensions and can compete with any American and European movie of the same kind. My only complaint is that the movie is too short. I would have liked some more background information about the four main characters. The character of Lian remains unnecessarily shallow. Some intriguing scenes are not entirely developed. Finally I would like to know what happened afterwards with Zhang, the narrator of the story. But these are minor quibbles. If you like movies of the grandioso kind, don't miss Warlords.
AD
