Warriors of heaven and earth

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This movie made last year and finally arrived in America.

Not giving too much away but i have to say the last 5 mins or so destroyed the whole movie. The director did a good job on connecting the audiences to the heros. They are not invincible, they have families, they need water in desert and of course, they die. Everytime when the heros met an obstacle we can feel it and we want to our hero to overcome it, and they did. Every part was nicely done in the sense that it was just like a fisherman (director) fishing fish. Once a fish (audience) is hooked, the fish feels pain and wants to struggle away. The fisherman loosen the string and let the fish to swim away. As soon as the fish have a little hope, the fisherman pull back the string, the there comes the pain. We thought we would see hope for the heros and that's just a bait for a greater tradegy.

It would be better if the movie remains a tradegy. But, as i said, the last 5 mins destroy it.

If you have seen the Seven Samurai, you couldn't resist to associate this with that. This movie and Seven Samurai are on the same line. Of course a black and white movie cannot deliver is the majestic colors of a desert.

The movie as a whole is not a typical chinese movie. That's way it made its way to u.s. i belived it was made with "winning international awards" in mind, just like Zhang yi mou's Hero. But there is a gap between mainland China directing and outside China appitite. And just like Hero, both directors are not doing what they were doing best, instead they comprimised to please non chinese judges. Nontheless, it is still a movie worth watching. After all, it was made for you guys (non oriental oriented).

Some information, just in case...

The story was set in Tang dynasty. Han and Tang were the two most successful dynasty in China. Most chinese now address their (our) race as Han people or Tang poeple. Tang started from early 600 to early 900 AD. Right in the middle, you have the only emperess of China. Two of Tang's emperors were so successful that people don't have to close their doors at night in the capital area.

Buddhism reached its peak two short dynasties before Tang, around late 300~500 AD. Clans of northen nomads came to China and took, then, new Buddhism as their culture, as contrast to converting wholly to Chinese culture. As time went on, Buddhism became part of Chinese culture. One of the Tang emperor was so pious that he sent a chinese monk walked all the way to India to get the original copy of Buddhism scriptures (This story was then immortalized into the novel called "journey to the west").

With this two information in mind, i think you would understand better why these people fought so hard in the movie.

 

I loved this movie... as much as The Seven Samurai (additional info: Yul Bryner's Magnificent Seven was based of The Seven Samurai). And have to agree that the last five minutes can be a major spoiler of this great film. It went from classic to fantasy all of a sudden. But still a great film.