La Grande Muraille

There are awesome movies on one side while dreadful movie on the other and then there is this decent movie. The concept in this movie was at large not much different from LOTR but the director along with the writers, portrayed the magnificence of The Great Wall in a great fashion through a great angle view of the wall, through enemy creatures and the army itself which is refreshing rather than going on and on about the size of the wall (which is quite common these days in numerous movies and extremely annoying). Also there was this sprinkle of light but good jokes which captures the mood.Thus the movie in a nutshell was decent and entertaining.

This film tells the story of two Western men who goes to China in search of gunpowder. They enter the Middle Kingdom with the foot of a beast they have killed, hoping to make a bargain with the Chinese for gunpowder. Instead, they get into a big adventure with monstrous beasts that nothing could have prepared them for.

I was really skeptical about "The Great Wall", because the last film I watched that was made for the Chinese market was horrible. "The Great Wall", on the other hand, pleasantly surprised me because it surpassed my expectations with flying colours. The plot is tight, thrilling and well paced. I am so happy to see Chinese actors and actresses taking positive roles. Even the Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau is only having a supporting role in this film! In addition, I was not expecting Jing Tian's English to be as good as that. She had a mostly non speaking role in "Kong Skull Island", so I thought it was because of the language barrier. The battle scenes against the beasts are plentiful, and the scenes are thrilling and draws me in like a magnet. I cannot wait to see what happens next. The grand finale is breathtaking, both visually and literally. I enjoyed it a lot.

First of all, this movie does a lot of things right. The costume designs are great, the set designs are very convincing and the CGI is, although not cutting edge, up to modern standards in film-making. The music score could have been better but maybe the composer had a Chinese audience in mind.

The acting will not win any Oscars but we see some genuine moments of emotion and bonding and believe it or not but there are one or two scenes with a good suspense arc. Moreover, Jing Tian has a nice smile and looks really fine in uniform. That might be my own idiosyncratic standard but an attractive female lead certainly adds to the "positives".

With all that praise then, why does it fall short of being a truly great movie? As my summary indicates it is simply overloaded with too many plot devices. It's a hero/East meets West/monster/action/tale of betrayal and redemption/romance/fantasy movie loaded with Chinese symbolism capped by a rather weak, anticlimactic and hurried cookie-cutter ending. The audience never has enough time to get emotionally invested in the characters. The script tries but there simply isn't enough time to do it all and eventually the movie does too little to explore any of the plot elements and characters.

Nevertheless, it is not a bad movie and certainly not ambitious enough to deserve any of the vitriol people read into the story without ever watching the movie. I was entertained but not really awestruck.

As a constant film goer I was really impressed with this film. It was entertaining. The story worked well. The acting was great. And the effects were really impressive. I watched it on a big screen in Bangkok and enjoyed the experience. The sound was equally impressive.

I just can't understand why the really negative reviews abound. Some are cursing it for having foreign actors. Others about the political situation etc. And the poor director is even getting a caning.

The story is about a legend. And it was wonderful to just sit back and let someone tell a story. I nearly didn't go because of all the bad reviews but I am glad I went and made up my own mind.

Go and see it.

Matt Damon, given his predicament and the backlash of being a white person cast in a move that was based in China, still gave a great performance. The plot was nothing special, but I throughly enjoyed the concept. The cinematography was beautifully shot and the colors throughout the movie make it very pleasing to the eyes. Without the camera work, this would not be a good movie. I think this movie is still worth a watch.