This movie was one of my most anticipated movie for the early 2017. Its trailer had been shown many times in previous weeks and the movie itself started to have the midnight show on the New Year's Eve. However, since my wife and I had a weekend staycation and wanted to enjoy our room for the night, we decided not to see the movie then, but on its premier date yesterday. So off we went to see it in our usual favorite cinema location on a weekday, i.e at Lotte Avenue at 7 PM. Well let's get on with the movie, shall we?
Brief Story Line
A group of European mercenaries were circling around the desert in the North of China while looking for the rumored black powder which supposedly can create explosions. After escaping from the chase of the local tribe, they were spending the night at a hidden place while determining their next action plan. During their rest, they were attacked by something in the dark where William (Matt Damon - The Bourne Identity, The Martian and so on) was able to kill one of it and asked his friend Pero (Pedro Pascal - The Adjustment Bureau, Game of Thrones TV series) to bring along the remaining hand of the monster.
When they were trying to go further north and being chased by that local tribe again, they reached the great wall and were immediately captured by the soldiers guarding the wall. Investigated by commander Lin (Jing Tian - Police Story 2013) the Chinese soldiers were amazed of William's claim that he had killed the monster. Strategist Wang (Andy Lau - star of sooo many Hong Kong movies) was more open minded and quite trusted William's story and advised their leader General Shao (Zhang Hanyu - Bodyguards and Assassins) to hold them for further questioning, since they got warning of an imminent attack. They also wanted to protect the secrets of the great wall kept inside, which was why the westerners must be locked in the wall.
This was where the movie started to become suspenseful as we were shown for the first time, the monsters which were going to attack the wall. These monster later on revealed to be called Taotie were readying themselves for the attack under the lead of their queen. This countless monsters were very vicious and fast and not easily killed.
During this attack, William and Pero were put on the top of the wall guarded by a young soldier played by Lu Han (Time Raiders) and with the help from a fellow westerner who later revealed to be Ballard (Willem Dafoe - Spiderman trilogy, The English Patient etc), William and Pero managed to unbound themselves from the ropes and fought against the monster as well. After this first attack, General Shao changed his mind about William and Pero and decided that they could be trusted after all, although Commander Lin was still skeptical.
William and Pero found out from Ballard who had been in the wall for very long time that the mythical black powder truly existed and Ballard knew where to find them. The three of them planned on how to acquire the powder and run away from the wall back to Europe. However William who was shown by Commander Lin of what the soldiers behind the wall was fighting for, was feeling a bit doubtful and tempted to fight alongside them.
Meanwhile, the Taotie monsters who kept on attacking the walls, seemed to be evolving and getting smarter every time. This really concerned Strategist Wang who tried his best to look for ways to tame and ultimately kill the monsters before they made it through the wall and into the capital of China.
So could the strategist find this way? Could William, Pero and Ballard run away from the walls with the black powder? Or would they fight together with the soldiers to fend off the Tao Tie monsters? Find them all in this exciting fantasy action movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Now this is an interesting Chinese movie which I understand was the biggest budgeted movie of all time in China history. Being a collaboration between Chinese and Hollywood movie industry, it is understood why Western stars were also cast in this movie, like Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal and Willem Dafoe. However, aside from these 3 people (and 3 more very very minor roles), all the other main and supporting roles are from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. At first I was worried that the movie might be too Hollywood with all English speaking, but apparently that was only done whenever the scenes were involving these 3 guys. Rest of them were spoken in Chinese.
The premise of the movie was told to be a legend, where the great wall of China was built not only to stand against the threats from outside world and other tribes/countries, but it was also built to avoid the attack from monsters. So there is no need to think about logic in this kind of movie. The special effects of the monsters were very good, and the fighting scenes and choreography were done very nicely. The costumes of the soldiers were very good to look at. However, the CGI were not too good to my opinion. There were scenes where the pictures really looked computerized (particularly in the finale fight scenes). However, the rest of them, especially the hand to hand combat with the monsters were cool. The musical effects and the sound effects of this movie were exceptional. I love the way that at some scenes there was just silence, with sudden sound effect that could blow your mind. The playing of the drums were the most exceptional ones to me.
Zhang Yimou as the director of the movie was very experienced in directing martial arts movie which can be seen from the smooth colossal fight choreography. Some of his prior works were so good that they were submitted for Academy Awards nomination such as Hero (Jet Li, Tony Leung, Donnie Yen etc), House of Flying Daggers (Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhang Ziyi) and Curse of The Golden Flower (Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li and Jay Chou). All of those had similarities in term of beautifully done fight choreography and color contrast just like this movie.
In term of the movie itself, it is purely for entertainment purpose. You would feel the suspense during the fights with the monsters. I think this is also the first time that Andy Lau speaks in English quite a lot in a movie, but the proportion is still reasonable (not that he speaks it all the time). And Pedro Pascal being the friend of William provided some funny moments as well. The showing of the grand great wall also gave the sense of power and made me want to go and see the real one. Oh, one scene was also very lovely in the middle of the movie when thousands of lanterns were released to the sky accompanied by the powerful drum playing.
In the end, my wife and I were entertained with this movie. The only flaws that I could think of would be the overuse of CGI in few scenes, and the fact that the movie itself felt too short (only 104 minutes for such grand movie). Good thing that the suspenseful action scenes were quite a lot and frequent and the story pace felt just right. Anyway, if you are looking for some good fantasy action movie with the war between humans and monsters, plus some East meets West story, then this would be a good option. But if you are one of those people who do not like to see too much CGI in movies, or if you feel too many Hollywood interference would destroy a movie, then this one might not be for you. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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