Big budget Asian films are becoming synonymous with tragedy. I've seen Crouching Tiger, Hero, Fearless, Shinobi (actually Japanese), and now Musa the Warrior, and they all have one thing in common: the hero dies. These movies are very much contrary to the American ideology that has been propagated in the cinemas for years; that of the hero saving the day, getting the girl, and oh yeah... living. Don't get me wrong, I admired the non-Kung Fu Chinese movies, and Musa the Warrior can be added to my list of likables.
The movie had a good story, but even more so it had some very interesting characters. When I say interesting, they were characters that you could form a concrete opinion about. Either you loved them or you hated them. And yet again Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Rush Hour 2, Hero, & Memoirs of a Geisha) is in another movie. She plays a princess in this movie, and if being a princess means being pampered, bratty and annoying, then she hit the nail on the head.
Along with the story, the movie featured some good, if not gory battle scenes. There was plenty of blood shed, loss of limbs, and otherwise less than sexy means of being killed. But it portrayed one thing well: war isn't pretty. I took exception to the length of the battle scenes though. Even if battles do take that long, they should have adapted them for theater. At times it was also difficult to keep up with who was who in those battle scenes. Besides being a little lost during some of the early battle scenes, I was a bit lost during their journey. I'm not familiar with China at all, so it would have been much more helpful if there was a caption to tell the audience where they were a different times.
The negatives still were not nearly as bad as the positives of this movie were good. I hate to say that I somewhat expected many people to die, and even though I wasn't quite sure if Yeo sol would be killed, I wasn't the least bit surprised. His death was a noble one and that was to be expected. One of these days a Chinese movie is going to have to end with someone dying of old age.
The movie had a good story, but even more so it had some very interesting characters. When I say interesting, they were characters that you could form a concrete opinion about. Either you loved them or you hated them. And yet again Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Rush Hour 2, Hero, & Memoirs of a Geisha) is in another movie. She plays a princess in this movie, and if being a princess means being pampered, bratty and annoying, then she hit the nail on the head.
Along with the story, the movie featured some good, if not gory battle scenes. There was plenty of blood shed, loss of limbs, and otherwise less than sexy means of being killed. But it portrayed one thing well: war isn't pretty. I took exception to the length of the battle scenes though. Even if battles do take that long, they should have adapted them for theater. At times it was also difficult to keep up with who was who in those battle scenes. Besides being a little lost during some of the early battle scenes, I was a bit lost during their journey. I'm not familiar with China at all, so it would have been much more helpful if there was a caption to tell the audience where they were a different times.
The negatives still were not nearly as bad as the positives of this movie were good. I hate to say that I somewhat expected many people to die, and even though I wasn't quite sure if Yeo sol would be killed, I wasn't the least bit surprised. His death was a noble one and that was to be expected. One of these days a Chinese movie is going to have to end with someone dying of old age.