San guo zhi jian long xie jia

Based on the classical "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" Daniel Lee ventures back to one of the most important eras of Chinese history - the time of the titular Three Kingdoms, of ever-lasting conflict and battles, which formed many a legend. Here focus is directed to the famed and glorified general Zhao Zilong (an ever-pleasing Andy Lau), a supposedly undefeated warrior, who brought glory to the the kingdom of Liu Bei. Backed by the military genius of Zhuge Liang (Cunxin Pu) and the remaining Five Tiger Generals, the heroes bathed in glory.

Opulent, radiant the settings, scenery, cinematography, lighting and general art direction borders on perfection with each shot nurtured and tended too is this lavish epic. With appropriate heroic pathos to accompany the story-telling Zhao Zilong is presented as a chaste and immaculate warrior, as if almost striving towards a Buddhist transcendence. Unrivalled in battle, loved by all men and glorified even by contemporaries, Zhao shines even when riding out by himself against an entire army. Naturally such a directorial choice can't be criticised, similarly as chanson de geste type poems are what they are: glorified monuments of heroic deeds, unabashedly singing praise to the main protagonist. In a take it or leave it deal, Zhao Zilong is a hero, unfailing and relentless in pursuit of unification of the kingdoms, even in tragedy a man suit for tall tales of glory.

However "Three Kingdoms" falters due to one rather overbearing glitch: lack of middle story. The depiction of Zhao Zilong's life basically limits itself to an extravagant presentation of two moments of his story: the beginning and the end of his legend. Unfortunately Daniel Lee fails to even trouble himself with building any back-story to the character (who was he? where did he come from? what motivated him?) or worse yet fails to build any backbone to Zilong, instead fast-forwarding us from his initial feat of bravery as a young man, straight into the time of him being an elderly general, the sole remaining of the Five Tiger Generals, right before what was to be his final battle.

The whole context of in between is forfeited, thus never even truly affording the audience an understanding as to the prominence of his battle achievements or allowing him to build an emotional connection with viewers. Such a thinly presented story is however aptly summarised in the fading line of the movie itself "How many things before and after fade into gossip and laughter."

The top review I see on here asks why this movie isn't getting higher ratings. I counter: why should it? What should be a masterful story is ruined by absolutely poor directing. This movie seeks to do such much in a short amount of time. If this movie were another hour long, maybe they could've squeezed everything in. Instead, you have back stories that don't get fleshed out, people who become major characters out of nowhere and then suddenly its supposed to be emotional when they get killed, and decades of time passing with barely any filler of what happened in that time. And what is up with the ending? There is no catharsis, there is no meaning behind any of the actions that occur, there is just superfluous and emptiness. And why even throw in that hint of a love story? Nothing ever gets spoken of it again. Everything that occurs is just pointless.

If you are looking for a Chinese war movie simply to pass some time, this is watchable. Beyond that, there are many other movies in that genre that are more enjoyable and well crafted.

It seems as though it is only a half finished project. A first time joint venture- a major motion picture project put together by the Chinese and the Korean production teams, the Chinese took part in pre-production; from writing up the screen play to directing (a Chinese guy who made Jet Li's "Black Mask), acting & filming while the Korean team took care of most of the post production (& funding), the CGI, and scoring.

With almost unlimited amount of funding and the pool of world-class production talents in Asia, I cannot help but wonder how an opportunity like this could have gone this wrong. The famous Chinese classic- the three kingdoms - is an epic war story that one could not find its proper match in its scale in any part of the world. The movie deserved more than only a 90 min. duration. Why Why Why did the director and its team decide to cut out anything that resembled a real drama? Who knows. Jhon Woo wanted to give the project a proper attention, so in his upcoming three kingdoms project,'the red cliff' he is devoting 4 hours to tell the story.

The action sequences, camera works, set designs, costumes, and props, and even the score, you name it, they were all top notch. But Why? Why no Drama? Why could't the director decide to use another 30 more minutes to supplement the sheer absence of story-telling and the sufficient characterization of each of the major characters ? It would only have made the film 120 minutes, which is still within the main stream block buster length range. Besides I bet that anyone who came to see the movie must have expected something more of a... "brave heart" type of epic story and heart wrenching human drama and understood appreciatively even if the movie went more than 2 hours.

What a waste...indeed !!! I am a big fan of Three kingdoms and Any Lau, so i will always love any project that has anything to do with those 2 elements, but this one.... oh... a surprisingly disappointing project, indeed. I gave it a 5 out of ten, because as I mentioned, the picture is only a half-finished and at least that half was pretty good.

Three kingdom: Resurrection of the Dragon tells about the legend of one famous General Zhao Yun in the Three Kingdom. But unfortunately, there are many flaws in this movie.

First, this movie is a little bit off from the actual history. I never knew that Zhao Yun started his first career as a soldier directly under Liu Bei. He should been under a general name Gongsun Zan, before he changed his loyalty to Liu Bei. Then, there are Cao Ying and Luo Ping-An. Who the hell are they? Because as far as I know, the one who fought Zhao Yun in the last battle was Chao Zhen.

Secondly, for the actor. I personally think that Andy Lau is well-suited as General Zhao Yun here. But the actor for both General Guan Yu and Zhang-Fei is a little bit out of the course. While the actor who casted as Guan Yu seems too old, the actor's face who cast as Zhang Fei seems so childish. And the actor who played as Zhuge Liang looks like a traditional physician instead of a strategist. Generally, I would say, the casting is a minus here (except for Andy Lau, of course) For the story, it lacks explanation. There's no explanation for any act inside. No briefing before wars, no strategy meeting before wars, no nothing. It just give off the conclusion of what is happening right now, and lead us directly into the war. That's all. And that too, is a minus.

But still, I like the war in this. That's why I still give this movie a rating of 6, instead of 5.

Not good enough for all three kingdom fans. But if you're looking for just a war movies, than this is definitely for you.

To be brief, this movie was a disappointment.

The reasons are simple - it lacks any characterization, the whole story feels like a synopsis, not a full story. Scenes and images flashed by as if we are scanning (selected) pages of a novel, with no real details given.

I thought Andy Lau was good for the role and I didn't even mind Maggie Q's role; the samurai-like armor; the Wei forces' helmets resembling Stahlhelms (Nazi helmets) and the Shu's are like British soldiers being so obvious. These are cosmetic and artistic choices and didn't pose as a serious distraction. (The brief appearances of some other main ROTK characters were done just right and did provide a nice glimpse into what might have been part of a more romantic epic.) But still, give more meat to the story and characters, make it a real movie, not a hundred minutes long trailer.