Les 3 Royaumes - La Résurrection du Dragon

I like eastern movies, that are build around dynasties and wars and such. Even a lesser effort like this can be entertaining for me. I've said it before though, since I've watched MUSA, no other movie has come close to that! It's difficult to make another one, that would be in the same vein. While this one couldn't hold up to that, it's not able to hold up to other movies too (even from recent future, like THE WARLORDS, with Jet Li and Andy Lau).

All in all, this is quite nice, the action is decent, the story moves along with a good pace and it's quite enjoyable overall. If you will like it or not, depends on your view of movies in that genre/vein. Just don't expect anything great and you won't be disappointed!

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.

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.

Andy Lau stars as a general who started as a foot soldier and worked his way up through the ranks after several acts of heroism.Thirty years on he's forced to fight one last battle against the daughter of an old enemy.

Apparently based on the same source material (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms) that John Woo is using for his 5 hour Red Cliffs (due for release later this year) Here the "epic" story is reduced to around 100 minutes of marching armies and battles. Any sense of plot is cast aside for the fighting and deep pronouncements. To be fair the DVD I watched had barely coherent subtitles, but at the same time they were coherent enough to know that they really didn't have a great deal to translate. The plot lurches from thing to thing with very little explanation- or rather only explanation to carry the emotion. We're told things rather than shown things. The performances of Lau and Sammo Hung provide a great deal of emotion that isn't in the script. The bond between the two men and the emotion that they impart are the reason you watch the film, not for anything else...

...okay maybe the action. As a film of epic action scenes its quite good. its not great but it is is good in a retro old school style. Its pretty pictures of armies fighting and it is entertaining, if rarely engaging (something the films scant dialog and character building prevents from ever happening). Never mind that coming as it does on the heels of the Jet Li masterpiece Warlords the film has a great deal to live up to since that earlier film had real characters and real action, two things this film never manages to achieve. Add to the mix the over use of slow motion and the film really isn't worth the trouble.

Actually its worth looking at if you want to see the fighting and a couple of good performances.

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.