Epic Warlords Fights a Losing Battle
I feel like I saw Peter Chan’s The Warlords ages ago. Granted, as the first time I came across the picture was during the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival I guess you could say that feeling is pretty much true. The 1860’s Chinese war epic has taken what seems like an eternity to reach domestic theatres, Magnet Releasing finally taking a chance on the picture giving it a limited release and showcase on Video-On-Demand before shuffling it off to Blu-ray and DVD later this year.
Andy Lau and Jet Li in Magnet Releasing's The Warlords
To be honest, it’s easy to say why it has taken so long for the film to see the light of day. Although Li gives a strong and stirring performance as central figure general Pang Qingyun, and while a few of the epic battle sequences – most notably the half-hour long blockade of Suzhou City and the early assault on Shi City – are downright extraordinary, the melodramatics at the center of it all range from banal to outright silly. What should be a massive WWII-style war-is-hell allegory instead devolves into an absurdly turgid love triangle that barely kept my attention.
The basic plot is set during the Taiping Rebellion and revolves around Qing Dynasty general Pang, the sole survivor of a massive bloodbath. Traumatized, he’s rescued by lovely peasant Lian (Xu Jinglei), the woman giving him back his resolve as his thirst for vengeance begins to grow.
Through her he is led to bandit leader Zhao Erhu (Andy Lau) and his trusted sidekick Jiang Wuyang (Takeshi Kaneshiro). After he saves Zhao’s life Pang forms a brotherly bond with the two warriors, the trio ultimately engaging in a battle to support the government in a somewhat secret endeavor to avenge himself against a rival general responsible for the earlier massacre.
All this is just fine but director Peter Chan handles it all with a dour solemnity that quickly becomes tiresome. Additionally, other than the finely crafted character he’s handed Li to play the remainder of the cast are all stuck playing two-dimensional caricatures none of which are all the interesting, the usually reliable Kaneshiro looking particularly lost he tries to make the most of things.
On the plus side those battle sequences are truly sensational. Noted Hong Kong action impresario Ching Siu-tung (The Curse of the Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers) simply outdoing himself a time or two here, a set piece involving some canons simply beyond stunning. What more, there is a dug-in gritty realism to the sieges that is emotionally devastating, the human price a bloodstained tragedy that’s sometimes beyond belief.
But ultimately none of this ends up mattering like it should. The love story involving Pang, Lian and Zhao is beyond annoying, more fitting for a Harlequin romance than it is for this. The political machinations at the heart of all the military conflict is also never explored as fully as it should be and at times it feels as if large parts of the narrative have been excised for no apparent reason that I could easily surmise. A lot of the film feels peculiarly unfinished, and part of me can’t help but wonder why Chan would bother hinting at so much of it if he wasn’t even going to take the time to delve into things with greater detail.
I wish I liked The Warlords more than I do. Li really does give one of his very best performances here, and some of the battle sequences are certainly extraordinary. But the plot is a messy canvas of melodrama and political imbroglio that doesn’t make the grade, and while less is usually more in striving for brevity coherence is the biggest victim laid to waste on Chan’s cinematic battlefield.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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