Director: Yingli Zhang, Haonan Chen
Year: 2021
Country: China
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Action/Epic
Plot:
After the unification of China, a fabled sword is broken and split up in the countryside to ensure that it never be used for wrongful forces ever again. Decades later, the death of the emperor signals the start of a powerful rebel and his crew's plan to start their plan to steal the pieces of the sword and overthrow the kingdom including massacring the descendants of a major family to get the pieces of the sword for himself. When the lone survivor of the massacre emerges and is determined to hunt him down, she gathers a group of warriors to put an end to his reign of terror with the fabled sword in hand.
Review:
There's a lot of fun to be had with this one. The big thing with this one is the high-end action featured here, with the visuals of the fights and battle scenes taking more of a lyrical aesthetic that's complemented by a fun use of slow-motion during the scenes to go for elegance rather than thrills. The use of swordplay and archery alongside massive army battles instead of hard-hitting kung-fu which is a fun change of pace as well as offers the kind of technical skillset not normally associated with the genre. It's all far more artful and respectful while still keeping a high-energy pace to everything that keeps this one enjoyable as it winds through its familiar yet still somewhat workable storyline.
That, however, is the film's main stumbling block which comes from a highly unoriginal and somewhat cliche storyline that feels so much like the majority of the genre output of the time. The need to reclaim a fictional weapon that will help with the fight to stop a big bad evil trying to overthrow the peace of the kingdom is a highly overdone and predictable setup which doesn't make this stand out all that much. With the storyline here not providing this one with much of an opportunity to stand out with the highly underwhelming effects work for the battles as there's some highly obvious and intrusive CGI as well as green-screen work throughout here that gives away that kind of effect quite easily. The lack of gore and bloodshed in this kind of film is also rather detrimental here, which all manage to bring this one down slightly.
Overview: ***/5
Featuring a lot of great if unspectacular action and some minor issues with the familiar storyline, this is certainly enjoyable enough to be watchable but those drawbacks do bring it down. Give this one a look if you’re a fan of these swordplay-filled genre efforts or appreciate the style or approach here, while others who aren’t into the arthouse-style martial arts films might want to heed caution here.
Comments
Post a Comment