Hong men yan chuan qi

Tells the story of The Banquet at Hongmen, an event that marked the transition from the Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty in Chinese history.

Liu Bang and Xiang Yu are leaders of insurgent forces who work together to defeat the last remnants of Qin forces, but then each set their eyes on becoming emperor of the new dynasty. They both turn to their respective strategists, Zhang Liang and Fan Zeng, for advice. The advisors each formulate plans in an attempt to ensure their sponsor's success over the other, and engage in a battle of wits and cunning to achieve victory over their opponent. The opposing forces both put their plans into action starting at a banquet at the Hongmen Gate. Whose cunning will prove to be greater, whose foresight will be longer? Who will emerge victorious in the end? White Vengeance is a gorgeous production of suitably epic proportions, built around a well written script that succeeds in bringing these historical events and characters to life. The battle of wits, cunning and bravado makes for a great story, and the cast have been well chosen to fill their roles. Anthony Wong is particularly good as the aging, blind strategist, but the show is nearly stolen by Jordan Chan in a supporting role that gives the film two of its most memorable scenes. The presence of Liu Yi-Fei, whose face is surely the strongest argument for the existence of God that man has conceived, is of course most welcome.

The film has a number of battle scenes, which are generally very well executed. CGI is obviously used to make the massive armies seem truly massive, but is mostly eschewed for any close-up combat situations, with good old-fashioned people and the occasional wire, and just the occasional bit of CGI when somebody needs a sword, arrow or spear to go through them without alarming the film's insurance company unduly. This makes for some highly satisfying scenes of combat and carnage.

It's the dialogue and the characters that make the film though. Unfortunately, things do get a bit derailed towards the end with some scenes that are simply overcooked, and performances that lose their subtlety and break the illusion that we really are witnessing events as they unfurled. It's a shame, but the flaws aren't sufficient to undo the good work that comes before them.

Recommended.

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.

Zhang Hanyu and Huang Qiusheng gave us excellent performance.I love the strategies and ending.

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.

"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.