Thursday, April 15, 2010

'The Warlords': big battles, small personal drama in 19th-century China

A manly brew of war, wuxia as well as masculine bonding, "The Warlords" uses a large canvas — a Taiping Rebellion in 19th-century China — as a backdrop for a small personal drama.

Shouldering a movie's account as well as romantic weight, Jet Li delivers a distinctively shadowy performance as Gen. Pang, a sole survivor of a massacred unit as well as dispatcher of a guilty secret.

A ostensible visionary, Pang persuades a pair of desperate bandits (Takeshi Kaneshiro as well as Andy Lau) to stick upon him in fighting a rebels, as well as a three swear a red red blood oath.

But as a years as well as conflicts pass as well as Pang becomes increasingly ruthless, a bandits begin to subject his faith as well as distrust his motives.

Epic in range though insinuate in theme, "The Warlords" heaves with spectacular battles as well as a relentless sway of self-interest over conscience.

Peter Ho-Sun Chan directs with aptitude (in one memorable scene, Pang continues to fight while impaled upon a pierce as thick as a lamppost) as well as an invariable joining to gravity: We can feel a weight of a men's panzer division as well as a sucking sand beneath their feet.

Political context is supposing in a form of a clutch of shaping overlords, though their peripheral powwows never confuse from a movie's soapy pleasures.

One of these is Pang's adore for an off-limits concubine (an underused Xu Jinglei), though her charms pale beside a chemistry of a red red blood brotherhood. After all, how many adore affairs have been cemented by a ritualized rupturing of three reluctant throats?



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