Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon

There's two big epics based on Three Kingdoms coming to film. The other is John Woo's Red Cliff. RotD is another medieval battle flick ala Warlords. In China, it's cheaper to hire an army of thousands and film them in the desert than it is to make it all CGI. That's all well and good. Lots of battle scenes - flying about from horse to horse with lances. Great armor. The thing about Three Kingdoms is that anyone who knows anything about Chinese legend knows this story, so we know how it's going to end. It's a lot like Arthurian legend in the West. And this chapter takes place at the end, after everyone is dead. All the cool heroes of the book die before they unify the country - it's a bit like Moses never making it to the promised land. So this film decided to completely fore go any character development (read the book for that I guess) and focus on overly melodramatic scenes and battles. That didn't quite work for me.

Sammo Hung plays a coward, never even fights, which was a total waste of material. Andy Lau is Zhao Zilong, the final Tiger general, and he's ok, although is battle with Guan and Zhang was thoroughly unconvincing for me. Maggie Q is great as Cao Ying, one of China's great dragon ladies. I still think she's got something, despite Edison Chan scandals. Yu Rongguang is the same as ever. I've always hoped he would achieve more. Maybe someday. The highlight for me was Ti Long as Guan Yu. I've always been a huge fan of Ti Lung since the golden days of the Shaw Brothers. Unfortunately, like I said, this comes at the end of the story, so Guan's scene is distressingly short. But still, Ti Lung rocks the role. Like Warlords, this would be far more enjoyable on a huge screen with all the big battle sequences. We'll see how Red Cliff comes out.

This just showed at Tribeca.

Here's the official website