El fantasma

I have watched a LOT of really bad movies, and this isn't anywhere near the bottom of the barrel. In fact, it's kind of enjoyable. The bad guy is sufficiently bad that we he drives the story and justifies our anger. He has just enough complexity that he escapes being one- dimensional. Hayden Christensen is acceptable as basically the fallen hero, and Nicholas Cage is, well, a little off the wall.

Some people complain about the action, and the first sequence is not that great. But the later action scenes are decent, and the last sword- fight is pretty good.

Some of the story is sort of sketched in instead of really told in depth, but it's not inconsistent or riddled with plot holes. What story there is moves along at a good pace.

This film attracted me with the role of Nicolas Cage, however, he is not the main character and his role in the film is not quite interesting. This film is simply a Chinese movie with some new winds from western crusaders. However, it is meaningless, the makers tried to attract us with this image but they failed to connect the stories, so it becomes boring. I felt like being cheated.

The royal prince was practicing the arrows, but the result is just one hit shot, that's all. The storyline is half done.

Most important thing, the camera is terrible. If you want to watch fierce sword fights, then you will be seriously disappointed because the camera is so narrow like the you are the fighter in the movie, BUT it is shaken strongly so after a few minutes impressive, you will feel terrible.

Why don't they film it with wider view so we can enjoy the whole fighting and landscapes...? I hope they return my ticket money.

Anyways, the characters are good, I can not give them bad rating.

Finally, sorry for my bad English.

Nic Cage to some has lost it. He's not the main attraction here though. Hayden is (hence my summary line) and he is either barely succeeding in that brooding act he's putting on (going through a hard time trying to redeem himself, not entirely of his own free will mind you). Following orders is not always the best way to go.

The story is pretty straight forward, the action scenes are decent, but the cutting/editing of them is very frenzy. You might like that (it creates the illusion of fast and hard hits or blows to the body) or not, depending on your taste. Overall this is not the worst of Nic Cages recent outputs, but it's not an instant classic either

It's definitely a mediocre move. It's obvious there was a lot of work put into sets, costumes, and locations - although I did find it funny how they couldn't really decide what "Asian" actually was... it was fantastical enough that it wasn't jarring though. It's a shame the director doesn't know how to shoot action scenes well. The choreography actually looked half decent but it was so hard to actually see much of it, too many cuts and changing angles. As for the actors, all the supporting cast I felt did really well. Cage is just... well... yea... Cage... can't be anything except himself apparently. Christensen on the other hand, I feel like has come a long way since Star Wars (I think Jumper is the only other movie I've seen with him...) For the plot, I think the only time I was just utterly confused was right at the end. The final confrontation didn't make a whole lot of sense. The classic "don't let their deaths be for nothing" tropes with a perfect defensive layout.... that wasn't used... instead of using the caves the few left just walk out for the finale like all the deaths meant nothing..........

So overall, not enough to make me stop watching, but nothing exceptional.

This isn't a great film and I think that the low IMDb rating (4,6) is correct. I'm afraid that the explanation lies in the clichéd dialogues and in the naive action scenes (who could find convincing a man who regularly defeats dozens of enemies as if they just didn't exist?) which seemed outdated for the present times.

But this bad outcome is, under many respects, a pity, because the film has a very good cast, great stunting, beautiful scenery, excellent images, a modern editing and its storyline, although not even remotely original, is a honest classical plot for an adventure movie.

Nick Powell is a top stunt coordinator (and that's why the stunting is so good), here at his first experience as a director. I don't know how great his ambitions are but he didn't seem far from making a film that could be much more appreciated by people like me.