An Empress & The Warriors AND Three Kingdoms

I am back! Let's talk about movies today, recent Hong Kong movies, to be precise. Haven't blog bout movies for quite a while. Last month, I went to watch "An Empress & The Warriors" during my friend's birthday, a decision which all of us regret later. Then, last few days, I went to watch "Three Kingdoms", again, a movie that's hugely disappointing.


Let's start with Empress. From the chinese title, I thought the plot will revolve around few kings or princes fighting for a super beauty, like Troy, or stuff like that. End up it's just about a woman taking up his dead father's throne to avoid conflicts in the royal family. Aiya, it's the usual story la, the supposed successor is a good fellar, but not a true son, and another villain son wanna be the king, and will do anything to get it. It has little bit of romantic element, but the supposed romantic dialogs are super lame in my opinion, makes me laugh instead of feeling very "lam". I guess I am too stupid or not romantic, you tell me the answer bah. Not much surprises on the plot, disappointing.

We move on to the next part, visual. The visual deserves some credit after all, with some quite impressive war scene, but still, if compared to last year's "The Warlords" or "Assembly", this is nothing. It doesn't give you the epic feel of a battle, which in those times, battles consist of thousands and maybe more. Most probably it's because of budget constraints, which is understandable in HK film market.

Nothing is special in term of audio, and the title song is total crap. I always think both Leon Lai and Kelly can't sing well, and this song proves it! Acting is a disaster for Kelly. She shouts for most of her lines, causing her talkings with no emotions at all. I will give an average rating for the rest of the casts acting.

Oh ya, did I mention this? I fall asleep during the movie. Another sidenote, look at the poster above, I think you can see Leon Lai wearing full war armor. Looks cool right? Sadly to say, he did not wear this armor in the movie except for 1 scene which only lasts for around 10 seconds. Please don't make misguiding poster just to lure our ticket's money!


Let's move on to Three Kingdoms, a movie about Zhao Yun, a legendary general during the Three Kingdoms era in Chinese history. He is such a good general, to the extend of earning a title "Victory General", achieving victory in almost every battle. If you wanna make a movie of him, make sure you do it right, or else every Three Kingdoms fans out there gonna shoot you sampai mati, and this is exactly what happens to the film. I got few friends who are super Three Kingdom fans, and ALL of them feel that the movie is unable to bring out the best of Zhao Yun. Putting history aside, the story-telling is very loose. Scenes fly here and there without really going in depth of what's going on, making me feel very very lost in the film.

Visual is same as Empress, not impressive due to budget constraints I guess. The blur fighting scene did not improve the movie at all. Nothing special on audio, everyone's voice is dubbed, crap! Acting, average average average. Andy Lau gives me a feeling of an ordinary general instead of the legendary Zhao Yun, way below expectation.

In term of Chinese classic war film, I kinda realize how good is last year's "The Warlords" compared to this 2 crap movies. But still, my best Asian movie of 2007 goes to "Assembly", a China film which is not popular at all in Malaysia. All I can say is I am totally disappointed with this 2 movies. They did not do well at all in the key elements of film-making. This makes my anticipation for "Red Cliff" (directed by John Woo) even higher. Do not let me down, Red Cliff and John Woo!!