Dragon Blade

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.

I've read some of the reviews -- the bad reviews, I generally agree more, the good ones were often too exaggerated. Although I am not a master of the Chinese language, I'm able to understand both English and Chinese movies without subtitles, so I'd like to first address the title. I've no problem with the English title, whatsoever, but to the reviewer who said that it has something to do with lions? He's WRONG. If you want me to translate it, it's something along the lines of Top Gererals, Brave (Mightly) Armies (Troops).

Now, to my review. First, the good. The actors were good. The fight choreography was good. The cgi was good. That's pretty much it!

So, what was so wrong about the movie? The message of the movie is simple, to promote harmony among people despite the obvious differences in race, ethnicity, culture, creed, etc, etc. I get that! I have nothing against that either. The challenge however, is to incorporate that message seamlessly into the story without it feeling too forced or cliché -- and that was exactly how I felt when I watched some of those scenes.

But the bigger failure... is that the story makes absolutely no sense at all. It makes no sense to me how easily they could move and deploy their armies along the Silk Road from Rome to China or vice-versa. It makes no sense that they were all able to understand a common language, that is English. In ancient China, Chinese don't speak a common Chinese language, they speak different dialects. And if you add to the mix, the European languages, and the Middle Eastern languages, there is just no common ground in there for them to be able to understand each other.

It makes no sense that Jackie Chan is so trusty from the start (almost like a fool). It makes no sense that Adrien Brody would (for the sake of not spoiling) find himself eventually in that predicament. A lot of things that happened in between didn't make hell of a lot of sense either...

DRAGON BLADE isn't a great film at all, but given that the previous Jackie Chan film I watched was Chinese ZODIAC, it seems somewhat acceptable by comparison. Certainly it's a messy movie, which is typical of Jackie's more recent efforts, but it has some good stuff included alongside all of the tat. The story is supposedly based on historical fact and involves some Roman soldiers who traverse the Silk Road and find themselves in China. They're split into two factions, the small number of good guys and the overwhelming bad, and the good guys end up joining forces with Jackie and his men to fight the enemy. What DRAGON BLADE boils down to is a heady mix of laughable sentiment, Chinese comedy, war and battle sequences, and some very bad acting.

Jackie himself doesn't really seem to do much that's new in this film. The director throws in a few of his old-fashioned fight scenes to recall his glory days, and while the action is acceptable, it's never memorable. It's the western actors who do surprisingly well: Adrien Brody as the quietly menacing villain, and John Cusack as the likable ally. Some of the set-piece sequences are well-handled, like the building of the defences, and the large-scale action at the climax is quite a lot of fun. I was glad to see that director Daniel Lee has calmed down since the days of DRAGON SQUAD and can now direct reasonable fare like this and THREE KINGDOMS: RESURRECTION OF THE DRAGON. DRAGON BLADE isn't perfect by any means, but there's a good film hiding underneath the mish-mash of styles and ideas.

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.