wafer thin and twice as breakable

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2003)

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD
I have NEVER, EVER seen a supposed epic that has garnered a Golden Globe nomination, and yet has actually people LAUGHING IN THE THEATER and a general thumbs-down consensus. Is something disastrously wrong with the taste of the Hollywood foreign press? I don't know. But this is a work from one of China's foremost filmmakers, and some of his previous work has been so touching it has made me cry before. So I was willing to give it a chance.
You probably know the plot by now, in 220 BC the great Emperor Chin is about to unite the war-torn country into a great empire by defeating the opposing kingdoms, and thereby giving China its Western name. Of course being such a megalomaniac invites attempts on your life. One day a county sheriff brings in the swords of the Emperor's most feared assassins and then requests an audience with the Emperor himself. Then we hear the tale of how this lowly sheriff did in the other great swordsmen. Emperor suspects something fishy, and offers how own POV of what happened, and so the tale switches between several POVs and the truth, each one told in a different predominant color.
Sounds intriguing, but...
Man, did my disappointment mount as I watched it. But do not get me wrong, there are a lot of excellent things about this movie. Firstly, you wish the director could have made Lord of the Rings because he does things with similar shots of armies, utilizing a perfect mix of live-action and CGI, that LOTR didn't dare touch with a ten foot pole. Then the character of Emperor Chin, historically one of China's most vilified and dignified rulers, re-imagined like a Chinese Darth Vader, complemented by bad-ass martial arts skills. Sweeping cinematography, lovely production design and a bold attempt of attempting a serious dramatic story by using different viewpoints to reveal the personalities of the various characters.
So I found an interesting case here, a movie with a lot of things going for it that somehow falls short. Why were the target audience like me thumbing down in utter disappointment? Had to say, it struck too far off anything I ever expected from the "martial arts epic of my dreams". It was a well-told story, but just wasn't bold, heroic, romantic or human enough for me. For starters, why did we need so many versions of the same tale if it contributed nothing to what the film had to say? This is not a movie about the subjectiveness of truth or the inevitable imprecision of history. That was a problem in itself.
The acting is competent, but only as competent as can get with the level of the script: Jet Li is a cipher, Tony and Maggie are vulnerable and soulful, Zhang Ziyi is a screaming nymphet that basically resembles Winona Ryder with a major attitude problem but with none of Ms Ryder's intensity. The intriguing (but only as he is historically based) show-stealer has to be Chen Daoming as Emperor Chin. The nuances of his performance, showing both the compassionate and brutal traits of the ruler, is inspired.
I think this movie has forgotten that film should live and breathe and grow with the audience. Especially when one considers the nature of genre filmmaking. It is so utterly self-contained and self-contemplating that it has lost touch with those things people seeking a good story identify with. It's the Gwyneth Paltrow of martial arts films: pretty, competent but wafer-thin and twice as breakable.
There is perhaps one scene that shows where the movie could have gone: the Emperor's fight with Broken Sword. This fight is intense, well-paced and a breathtaking show of swordsmanship altogether. There are almost no computer-aided flourishes here as practical and manual effects take over. And the result is simply breathtaking and a moment to treasure.
Score (out of 100): 50