La battaglia degli imperi - Dragon Blade

Colorful film with plenty of battles, emotion, fantasy, imaginaton, martial arts and sword-play.¨Dragon Blade¨ is a rich , enjoyable and romantic take on the Chinese Martial Arts genre with Roman battles, along with inventive choreography and it also belongs to ¨Wusia¨ theme, China's heroic swordsman subgenre. Huo An (Jackie Chan), leader of the ¨Silk Road¨ Guard, is unjustly condemned to slavery along with his fellow guards. Meanwhile, the Roman general Lucius (John Cusack) escapes to China, fleeing from the evil and ambitious Tiberius (Adrien Brody), after rescuing a blind little prince. Later, Huo An and Lucius' paths will cross. When the Eagle meets the Dragon !. When empires collide...legends are born !. Heroes will rise !. Armies will fall !.

This is a breathtaking movie full of noisy action , bloody combats , groundbreaking attacks , impressive battles and a lot of digital effects. It deals with two armies, both Chinese and Roman while confronting an unimaginable and seemingly invincible forcé. Lavishly produced, it was the most expensive Chinese film ever, with a budget of $65 million. The picture relies heavily on the really excessive special effects by means of 3D Computer Generator with extreme digitalization. The film contains breathtaking war battles , overwhelming struggles, spectacular images and a cast of thousands, due to the huge amount of actors and crew involved. The desert stage was provided by Gobi Desert, China, and other locations as Dunhuang, Gansu, and Studios: Hengdian World, Dongyang, Zhejiang, China. In the sunny desert actors and crew encountered hard shooting conditions due to the heat, sandstorms, thunders, their heavy costumes, and long filming hours.

This charming film is packed with fights in Jackie Chan-style, fantasy, humor, magic, betrayal, great entertainment and lots of fun. A fantastic film including a deadly confrontation and martial arts that satisfies on both accounts, concerning some heroes on a dangerous and long-awaited search for freedom. Director Daniel Lee puts the personal touch as just as deft even as he extends his grasp to show the timeless Chinese legends and historical facts, being based on his own enjoyable script. Action , adventure , romance , drama , heroes , heroines, tradition and martial arts blend in this attractive movie that belongs to Oriental genre. Providing overwhelming images, impressive production design, sense of style and revealing the breathtaking vistas of mythic China as well as the facinating Rome. The emotional impact of the fantastic adventure is as real and spectacular as the choreographed fight scenes are grateful and brilliant. Stars a stunning cast with notorious Chinese and American actors, such as Jackie Chan, John Cusack, Adrien Brody, Sharni Vinson, Choi Siwon, Peng Lin, Tin-Chiu Hung, Shaofeng Feng, among others.

Being inspired by true events about ¨The Silk Road¨: It is the name by which an extensive network of land and sea trade routes, opened by China since at least the 1st century BC, has been known since the 19th century1, which interconnected most of the Asian continent with terminals in the islands of Southeast Asia, the European Mediterranean and the east coast of Africa. Its various routes began in the city of Chang'an (now Xi'an), then capital of China, passing through, among others, Karakorum (Mongolia), the Khunjerab Pass (China / Pakistan), Susa (Persia), the Fergana Valley (Tajikistan), Samarkand (Uzbekistan), Taxila (Pakistan), Antioch (Turkey), Alexandria (Egypt), Kazan (Russia) and Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

The motion picture was professionally directed by Daniel Lee, but with some plot holes and too many flashbacks that break the ordinary action. Director Lee imbues every look, every gesture with grace and resonance, he has always been a filmmaker of finesse and fine feeling, directing acceptably this film. In his starts Lee became a director of television series. He also worked as an assistant for the famous film director Ann Hui when filming The Romance of Book and Sword (1987), which is based on Louis Cha's classic Wuxia novel. In early the 90s, Lee's talents in film-making was noticed by the master of Wuxia film, Cheh Chang, who later recognized that himself, Hark Tsui, and Daniel Lee are the "three generations of Wuxia film-making." Lee's film is characterized with the heavy black costumes and visual style, with the extreme emphases on masculinity as well as the bond of brotherhood, in which reflects the director's perspective of romanticism. Daniel Lee has made spectacular and hit films, such as: ¨Song of assassins¨, ¨The Climbers¨, ¨Time riders¨, ¨White Vengeance¨, ¨14 Blades¨, ¨Three Kingdoms¨, ¨Star Runner¨, ¨Dragon Squad¨,¨Master Swordsman Lu Xiaofeng¨, ¨Moonlight express¨, ¨A Fighter's Blues¨, ¨Black Mask¨, and several others.

While the main message of the movie was about multi-cultural peace (probably what the world needs now), choreography was good (nothing less than expected from a J.C. movie), side jokes to make you giggle from this otherwise boring plot, nothing else about the movie was able to redeem it from it's cliché story progression and bad script.

1) The message about multicultural peace was smacked right in audience faces left, right, up, down from the beginning of the show. To make things worst, coupled with cheesy lines, it made a profound and wise motif seem plain cheesy, overly-simplified and lacked the depth it should have had.

2) Despite the strong development of major characters, minor/side characters were not grounded enough. Fickle change in beliefs by side characters (people of the Wild Geese Gate), once again, made the story look superficial and badly developed.

Unfortunately, great choreography, scene shots and strong casts could not save it from its draggy, underdeveloped plot and horrible script.

If ever anyone in the history of cinema has earned 2 hours of my life, it's Jackie Chan. Unfortunately, I was repaid this sentiment with two of the most horrible hours of cinema made in recent years.

When I heard of Romans fighting it out in the Silk Road, I liked the idea. But instead the film starts out with two Chinese historians (who speak English, naturally, since this is aimed at an international audience) searching for a lost city that the Romans built. The beginning is bad... ominously bad, and it only gets worse from there.

Rewind 2,000 years and with the tone set for a serious affair, until Jackie Chan adopts his usual "stunt-fu" in a fight scene completely out of place, but hey, it's Jackie Chan, so carry on.

Enter the Romans... John Cusack is his usual self but he seems to be accompanied by two of the most horrendous actors I've seen, in the guise of a child would-be Emporor and his male nanny. Actually, aside from Brody, Cusack and one or two Centurians, pretty much everyone who speaks English will make you cringe with how god-awful their "talent" is.

Anyway, the script's a total mess and for long periods, is actually very boring. Brody turns up as some power-craved maniac Emporor who didn't need to do anything bad since he was always going to be the Emporor anyway, and then we have a battle and, thankfully, the film ends.

Only, it doesn't. Instead, it goes back to the historian couple who enjoy the romantic scenery of the few sand-blasted columns remaining upright before they illogically announce that they'll never share their discovery, even though it's the whole point of their very existence!

Sigh. This film is just bad, illogical and painful and unless you're a die-hard Jackie Chan fan, I implore you to avoid it. For those of you who are Jackie Chan fans, just know that this is one of - if not THE worst film he's ever made and ask yourself: "Do you really want to taint your opinion of the great man by sitting through this?"

The story in the movie is a complete mess. I'm not going to go into details, but if you are considering watching this movie, you must have already accepted that legions of Romans in China is OK. It would be more plausible if they shifted the accent a bit more into fantasy (e.g. different kingdoms, one is more like Roman Empire and another like China, but not actual countries), so there are not so many complaints about historical inaccuracies, but it is what is and according to them, it's based on historical facts. There are also a bit too many secondary undeveloped characters.

So, as the title says, you would enjoy it if you just watch it for Jackie. The sword fights are pretty good; other fights, well some are not bad, some are meh. I watched it to the end, skipped only a few times, overall not his worst movie, but far from his best one.

Summary: Recommended only for true Jackie Chan's fans.

Epic historical war movies are easily marketable, they have a certain hook to captivate audience, especially when big budget and A-list actors are involved. Dragon Blade couples together many aspects from similar movies. With its grand production some of these work fairly well. However, it tries too hard to please viewers with inept script and poor direction that the movie becomes unoriginal, even to the point of cringe-worthy.

Huo An (Jackie Chan) is an officer of Silk Road tasked to maintain peace in a land divided by many countries. Soon, he's drawn by the turmoil and political struggle as conspiracy of Roman Empire knocks on his door step. The story admittedly has merits, there are a few subplots that are decent enough, although the pacing drags on way too much on unity issue. The main message that it wants to push is how many tribes or Silk Road can exist, this could be a great if the movie doesn't consistently shove it in the most heavy-handed way.

Jackie Chan is a star in his own right. He's not that well versed in acting, but audience would know what to expect at this point. John Cusack holds his own, but frankly he's not very interesting. The choice for child actor isn't that great either, this is an obvious bait to draw audience sympathy. Still, some of the Chinese actors are pretty good as they look more natural. Props to Adrien Brody, he alone raises the acting level. A beastly antagonist, he delivers a menacing on-screen persona.

For setting and costumes, the movie puts a lot of effort. Design is flamboyant, it almost looks like a high profile video game set. Each character has their distinct look which is quite appealing to showcase diversity. Choreography is fine as well, this is a strong point of Chinese movie. The fights are engaging with many details in movement, meticulous array of gimmick and different fighting style. At least it got the warfare department covered.

Cinematography, on the other hand, is bad till the point of cringe-worthy. The scenes are badly paced and often recycled, some scenes are even needlessly repeated several times. There's no logic on flashback of events that just occurred, it doesn't add to emotional value, instead it makes the movie that much boring. It also spams slow motion in insufferable rate, not to mention with overly aggressive soundtracks that attempt to sell the scenes with cheesy tone. It's as if the movie is constantly yelling, "Intense! Emotion! Sadness!"

Dragon Blade is an odd endeavor in epic historical film, it copies too many aspects of already known formula in hope that the success can be transmitted here. It has choppy direction and all sorts of issues, but the movie sometimes brings some good elements, which might just be enough for light entertainment.