Three Kingdoms (2008)

Andy Lau's been making war movies like they're going out of style, but his latest is a long arrow shot off the almost-classic A Battle of Wits, the anti-war actioner with the humane moral we liked so much.

Three Kingdoms, which to its credit is at least somewhat historically accurate, is very much removed from anything to do with discouraging carnage. In fact, it's one of those patriotic affairs where the opening sequence (yet again) bemoans the land's splintering into hostile polities, and the need to consolidate.

Not only have we seen exactly this kind of rhetoric a million times before, we've seen it in what feels like a million better, more fun movies. This Three Kingdoms isn't about fun, it's a laborious film whose greatest achievement is squandering tremendous star power on trivialities and a formulaic story.

Just to make sure you know, it's got Andy Lau, Sammo Hung, Maggie Q (why can't she just be Margaret Quigley we don't know), our beloved Andy On, Ti Long AND Yu Rongguang. Even with all of these obviously talented and well-trained professionals on board, Three Kingdoms still ends up a disappointment. And we won't even go into this being a DANIEL LEE flick. Yes, one of our fave directors in HK and the guy that kindly gave us awesome fare like Black Mask and Dragon Squad.

OK, it's not all bad. The basic premise is entirely trite but could have worked had it been treated well. We have one Zhao Zilong (Andy Lau), a regular guy from Changsha who joins the army in defense of his kingdom, one of three main ones competing for primacy over the realm. Yes, it's the story straight out of the novel and previous iterations, more or less, with sort of the same characters. Zhao Zilong befriends senior troop Luo Pingan (Sammo Hung), who guides the younger man into combat, where Zhao promptly proves his mettle and proceeds to rise through the ranks until making it as a nigh on invincible hero general.

Along the way he meets a cast of warriors, including Andy On and Vanness Wu in supporting and ultimately unfulfilled roles (and some awkward hairwork on the part of makeup). On the opposing side, we find Maggie as warlordess Cao Ying, aided by her general Han.

None of these characters get sufficient room to breathe and grow, resulting in something more akin to Konami's Dynasty Warriors – there's constant hacking and slashing, with protagonists hard to believe since they're so powerful but with no likable goal. The only motivation seems to be a jingoistic "unite the word by killing everyone", which is fair enough, but not enough to make a film good.

The battle sequences aren't the best, and you've sat through much more exciting ones very recently. There's some good CGI blood splattered all over the shop, which is an added bonus, but the inverse ninja law here simply isn't as amusing as it usually is – the two Andies go through so many enemy black armors it's literally not funny anymore, proof positive that if you want to make a massive swordplay movie, either endow it with a strong, heartfelt message, or render it a la the insane wuxia of the early to mid '90's. As it stands, Three Kingdoms is like Zhang Yimou's Hero without the pretty, artistic visuals and buzz power, or like Musa without the visceral grit and cynicism.

On the plus side, Three Kingdoms ends by mentioning the Jin dynasty, one of history's less remembered mainland dynasties. Yes, we get to avoid ano

Fmovies: 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.

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!

Three Kingdoms fmovies. 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.

Another Chinese epic film filled with heroes, enormous battle scenes, amazing panoramas and some great actors. Sounds cool and like a sure winner yet its an enormous waste of money and talent.

The battle scenes are a big disappointment. It would be fine if the writers/director/producers created a film that was small on battle scenes big on character development, plot development and dialog. Yet, the battle scenes are the majority of the film and there is no character development, very limited plot development and the dialog is boring and thankfully there's not much of it.

The battle scenes are filled with short cuts which are extremely hard to follow. One cut will have mounted units charging from left to right on the screen and then the next cut will show mounted units charging from right to left. Logically the viewer is led to believe that there are two opposing mounted units charging each other. A few cuts later it becomes apparent that all the mounted units are on the same side and chasing one guy.

The film spends 30-45 minutes on two battle sequences featuring a young Zilong, then 5-7 minutes on an elaborate ceremony featuring a middle aged Zilong and the rest of the film time is spent on the old Zilong.

The cinematography is typical of recent Chinese epics overly beautiful (death never looked so pretty) and big on ceremony. The problem is that it was chopped up like almond-fried chicken. The cinematography could have been the saving grace of this film however it was edited by someone on crack. The result is that it is beautifully confusing.

If you are looking for another great or at least entertaining Chinese epic film look elsewhere. There really is no reason to watch this film unless you are curious to the point of being masochistic as I often am.

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.