Hong men yan chuan qi

"White Vengeance" (aka "Hong men yan chuan qi") is right up alongside with epic movies such as "Hero" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and it is a shame that it didn't get as much attention as they did. "White Vengeance" is a grand epic and it completely took me by surprise.

The story, simply put, is about two brothers who become pitted against each other in a battle for rulership. There are too many subplots in the movie to fully do it justice with a synopsis. It has to be seen firsthand on the screen.

There is just so much detail in the movie, not only in the storyline, but also in the costumes, sets and props. It is simply overwhelmingly breathtaking.

I was impressed with the cast, and they had some big Hong Kong names on the cast list. Anthony Wong, Leon Lai, Jordan Chan and Andy On. I have never seen Jordan Chan in an epic movie, but he really held his own and did a great job. Yifei Liu also did an amazing job with her role.

"White Vengeance" was captivating and interesting from the very beginning and up to the very end. So you will not really be noticing that the movie actually runs for more than two hours.

This is definitely a MUST watch if you enjoy Asian epic movies.

Here's a swordplay film that takes its time developing its story and characters. "White Vengeance" is an elaborate, sumptuous, and often lavish epic film, ambitiously crafted by Daniel Lee ("Black Mask"). In the heart of the frantic battle sequences lies a thriller that thrills by its characters planning and trying to outwit, manipulate, and defeat one another.

Leon Lai and Feng Shao-Feng portray the two scheming leads, in an absorbing character study of the two. I was at a loss as to who was actually tyrannical or valiant. While both actors are good in their roles, Lai dominates the show with his subtle and effective performance, showing calm and reserve even at dangerous times. Zhang Hanyu and veteran Anthony Wong portray advisers to the two leads, with Hanyu showing a sombre aura despite looking wise; Wong borders on over-acting during the Banquet scene but improves greatly in his scenes after that.

From the mysterious opening to its melancholic ending, its characters that are full of wit and brains, this film never lets up on the complexity of the plot. I love films which take their time developing their key characters (bonus points if said characters are elaborate schemers) so I was pleasantly surprised that this film had done so, in a length of just under two and a half hours. Slow-paced? Maybe. Boring? Absolutely not. It is the characterization and elaborate scheming that makes it so exciting to watch; as time progresses the characters' motives become more and more entangled, and morals are questioned during the melancholic final 30 minutes of the movie, which elevate this epic film from good to near-great. Readers of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" may want to give this one a watch, here is a film which blends strategy with motive very effectively, to an extent where those traits are blurred.

However, like many swordplay films before, this one features the usual - elaborate and colorful costumes and production design, crisp cinematography, and an atmospheric music score to bring it home. "White Vengeance" somewhat strays from the music score part; it doesn't sound like the typical Chinese swordplay film, it sounds much more haunting than melodramatic. The cinematography, however is superb and will remind film buffs of similar shots in previous English epic films such as "Braveheart" or "The Lord of the Rings".

For all the stuff it got right, I am willing pass over the fact that some of the CG effects look awful and unnecessary, and that some of the stunts (including the battle at the Banquet) are too elaborate for its kind (but not reaching Yuen Woo-Ping levels).

All is well with the Chinese swordplay film. Lee has proudly claimed this film as the best movie he's made in his career. Not having seen all of his other films, I can't say, but he certainly has made a very good one.

Overall rating: 78/100

This could have been a great movie. However, its confusing plot, and melodramatic pauses result in it being little more than an endlessly underachieving monotonous epic bore. The setting during an interesting period in Chinese history held a lot of promise, but the dialogue too often degenerated into uninteresting drivel. The battle scenes came across as ridiculously fake and implausible. The film did have a couple of redeeming factors. The costumes were sumptuous and made me feel that my twenty first century wardrobe might be lacking in something. Furthermore, some of the sets projected a real sense of the era being depicted. Unfortunately, the computer generated images seemed to lack the depth of field and believability that one would expect even from a computer game. Despite its few strengths, I would recommend giving this one a miss.

This movie reminds me the classics by Akira Kurosawa. It contains a big surprise at the end. White Vengeance is about two Qin dynasty military strategists trying to trick opponents by using human weakness(..and more). Though it's not truthfully based on the well-known Qin dynasty story, the action moves on smoothly and maintains the suspense quite well. See it to believe and see it to appreciate the old Chinese wisdom.

Quote from Sun Tze's The Art of War:

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.

i partially agree with joe sun's review, but disagree that movies if borrowed from historical incidents had to match the facts correctly. but using historical stuff and making into movies indeed is not an easy task to avoid comparison judgment. this movie, inevitably would be judged critically like other Chinese movies with the similar historical I.O.U. facts. but it's not the problem that i consider this movie is another immediate failure when Chinese movie investors and producers tried to make a movie out of the ancient Chinese history. because the screenplay is simply so bad. it not only twisted the historical incident to serve the storyline conveniently but also failed to give all the characters enough background to develop. the whole plot only started from in the middle of the incident and then tried so hard to mix romance, fatal love, fatal decisions in battles. it neither sowed enough seeds to allow characters to develop into full-grown roles, nor sowed too less to narrow a straight storyline. furthermore, since it's about a war and battles between too civil militia forces, they had to use lot of fighting scenes to accommodate the background, so they had to use lot of meaningless footage to portray such highly CGI effect boring scenes and at the same time wasted a lot of production budget to furnish the scenes. actors cast for this movie are the popular ones but not all on the same level, the actor who played Liu Bang, is a rare species by always acting so rigidly like mummy but could still become a movie icon level figure. the story of the triangle romance also failed miserably, even laughable. fighting scenes are so formulaic, so boring to the extreme. every ingredient in this movie were wrongly and mistakenly used and put in, there's nothing right about this movie. my final verdict about this movie:

screenplay: 0/10 directing: 3/10 acting: 5/10 boring meter: 10/10

even with English or any other language subtitle, without the help of the basic knowledge of Chinese history, this movie would only fall into a big screen war movie produced from china. nothing else. viewers would only get a vague impression as another formulaic Chinese war movie mixed with some Chinese kung fu fighting scenes, lot of armors, swords, spears.... lot of beard and mustaches and, unavoidably with a sprinkle of pointless romance.