The Great Wall (2016)
Directed by Zhang Yimou
European mercenaries searching for black powder become embroiled in the defense of the Great Wall of China against a horde of monstrous creatures.
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The Nameless Order combine a level of superhuman discipline and acrobatic combat acumen comparable to Peter Jackson’s elves with flamboyant color coordination by division, reminiscent of the color-coded armies in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran .
The key structure of the story is that of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would be King” which was the source of inspiration for various films, the most important of which is the book adaptation with the same name starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine in 1976, while the most recent noteworthy descendant was Avatar in 2009.
The movie is a pale cross between the uber buddy film based on the Rudyard Kipling story "The Man Who Would Be King" and any one of the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
It is bad in spite of borrowing liberally from the 1950 Henry Hathaway cult classic “The Black Rose” (stream it!).
Nearly every line of dialogue exchanged between William and Tovar is banter so dated it feels lifted out of a ’90s action movie (and not one of the good ones; think “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” – and Damon’s unidentifiable accent is about as convincing in this as Kevin Costner’s was in that).
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Nearly everything here draws its inspiration from other sources, including battle scene aesthetics that borrow heavily from The Two Towers and the muddled, computer-generated critters reminiscent of Starship Troopers.
“The Great Wall” may be DeMille-like, but it’s a lot closer to “Godzilla” than “The Ten Commandments.”
And Zhang Yimou, the director of a disproportionate number of Chinese cinema classics including Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, even House of Flying Daggers… Zhang Yimou, who with his last movie, 2014’s Coming Home, came close to recapturing the aching lyricism of his early work… Zhang Yimou has now put his name to The Great Wall, a movie that seems like a grim parody of his style.
This Chinese American co-production directed by the great Zhang Yimou ("Raise the Red Lantern," "Coming Home") and written by "Prince of Persia's" Carlo Bernard & Doug Miro and "Michael Clayton's" Tony Gilroy was obviously tailored for global audiences, a Hollywood movie star plunked into 1100 A.D. China to save the day.
All this is a reminder that director Zhang, despite his start with thoughtful films such as “Red Sorghum” and “Raise the Red Lantern,” has devolved into a director known (witness his work on the opening and closing Beijing Olympic ceremonies) for spectacle more than anything else.
Now 66, veteran Chinese director Zhang Yimou is the man responsible for the 1991 masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern, which was preceded by the equally strong Red Sorghum (1987) and Ju Dou (1990) and followed by the profoundly moving film, To Live (1994).
A depressing thought considering 2017 is the 30th anniversary of Zhang’s debut film, Red Sorghum , which launched a magnificent run of emotionally opulent dramas including Ju Dou (the first Chinese film ever nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar) and Raise the Red Lantern .
No Golden Bear from the Berlin International Film Festival, a trophy he won for his 1987 directorial debut, Red Sorghum .
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It has the monster feel of Pitch Black combined with the epic battles of The Lord of the Rings and a healthy dose of Chinese culture thrown in for good measure.
Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong movie that inspired The Departed) is a major star in China and a terrific actor, but you’d never know it watching him look grim as Strategist Wang.
The Chinese army officially known as the Nameless Order is led by the noble Gen. Shao (Hanyu Zhang) and his chief strategist Wang (Andy Lau, “Infernal Affairs”).