Film: The Warlords
Release date: 2nd March 2009
Certificate: 15
Running time: 108 mins
Director: Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Starring: Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Xu Jinglei
Genre: Action/Drama/War/History
Studio: Metrodome
Format: DVD
Country: China/Hong Kong
Director Peter Ho-Sun Chan unites three of Asian cinema’s most prolific and charismatic leading men for an epic of war, morality and betrayal loosely based on one of “the great unsolved mysteries” of China in the Qing Dynasty.
1865. China has been ravaged by a decade-long civil war that is eroding the will of the nation. Destiny brings together three men, soldiers all, whose decisions and actions may yet decide the fate of the country. Brothers Er-Hu (Lau) and Wu-Yang (Kaneshiro) are joined by General Pang (Li), an unpredictable warrior haunted by a moment of rare cowardice, and driven mad by his need to atone for it.
With Pang uniting and organising their ragged army, Er-Hu and Wu-Yang soon become major players in the war for China. But, as their army marches across the land, each man’s moral code is tested by difficult and potentially soul-shattering decisions. Can they make free their country before destroying each other?
It is strange to consider that Jet Li, like Jackie Chan, is now very much an elder statesman of Chinese martial arts/action cinema. After twenty-plus years of working mostly within his righteous hero persona, Jet Li takes his longest stride away from his comfort zone with The Warlords, a grim, brutal historical epic. General Pang may share martial proficiency with Li’s back catalogue of heroic figures, but where he differs is in his tenuous grip on his own sanity, and an agenda that seems anything other than honourable. Like Jackie Chan’s recent attempt to exercise his acting muscles with The Shinjuku Incident, Li seeks to subvert his cinematic persona - his performance distorting his usually impassive features with tinges of bloodlust and a megalomaniacal frenzy. While the end result is a slightly over-cooked turn that ultimately does not match the sheer perfection of his necessarily blank performance in Zhang Yimou’s Hero, Li’s acting is nevertheless a notch above what his star vehicles usually permit him to do, his unhinged delivery extremely effective within the parameters of a war fable.
He is ably supported by his two co-stars. Andy Lau’s Er-Hu, the most honourable and conflicted of the trio, is an over-stuffed box of pent-up frustration surely destined to explode. Lau plays him with a measured stillness that is slowly, hauntingly, inevitably undone, and his performance here is arguably his best since 2002’s Infernal Affairs. But the star turn, almost predictably, is from Takeshi Kaneshiro, who makes believable the about-faces and suddenly redefined motivations the script thrusts upon Wu-Yang. Together, the three leading men form three pillars of a morality tale which, though fairly simplistic in its examination of necessity-during-war, is far more compelling than its occasionally pedestrian and predictable narrative.
The film itself is a stirring, searing war epic that owes as much to Greek, Shakespearean and operatic tragedy traditions as it does to Asian action cinema. Its battle sequences, directed by Ching Siu-tung, are visually stunning slices of pure excitement, even if they lack the crisp clarity of Ching’s work in the aforementioned Hero, and the screenwriter’s decision to gradually narrow the focus of the film to the characters and their emotional motives is a welcome change from war films that walk blindly into a chaotic final battle sequence. Both action and drama are shot with the lush, meticulous hand of the venerable Arthur Wong, whose cinematography conjures up some truly memorable images, not least the sight of a horrified Andy Lau standing in a sea of dead soldiers after a mass execution.
But, as stellar as The Warlords is on a technical level, there remain persistent niggles with a slightly underdeveloped script that is oddly elliptical, suggesting a film that’s received the kind of savaging in the editing room that its principal characters inflict upon each other on-screen. Whole scenes and sequences seem to be missing (for example, a siege of Nanking - presented as a bone of contention between the three conflicted lead heroes - is strangely skipped over), leaving viewers scrabbling to connect the dots. Likewise, a pseudo love triangle involving Jet Li, Andy Lau and Xu Jinglei’s Lian is hinted at, but never fully explored or committed to, and is eventually utilised purely as a device through which the script can swiftly put its main characters at-odds going into its third act, which unfolds with the inevitability of Shakespeare and the carnage of John Woo. In addition, any allegorical contemporary relevance to which the film might aspire is buried too deep beneath the violent, visceral aesthetic to truly resonate. While it may play very well for local audiences, The Warlords is likely to at least mildly alienate overseas viewers. That should not, however, detract from an often-exhilarating cinematic experience.
Subtlety is not on the menu for this feast of blood and carnage, but The Warlords is an effective historical epic with more than enough well-staged action to recommend it. The action is complimented by fine work from the cast, and Arthur Wong’s visuals are stunning. JN
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