Film: Mulan
Release date: 21st June 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 107 mins
Director: Wei Dong
Starring: Wei Zhao, Jaycee Chan, Rongguang Yu, Xu Jiao, Vicki Zhao
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama/Romance
Studio: Cine Asia/Showbox
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: China
Not to be confused with Disney’s 1998 animated blockbuster Mulan, director Jingle Ma’s 2009 epic offers a more sophisticated and nuanced retelling of the story based on a sixth century Chinese poem. Mulan: Legendary Warrior charts the early life and rise to power of Hua Mulan, a fearless heroine who disguises herself as a man and goes to war in place of her ailing father.
We first meet Mulan (Zhao Wei, perhaps best best known in the West for her role in Shaolin Soccer) as a young girl who causes her father a great deal of consternation by fighting with boys and generally refusing to behave as he believes a daughter should. It is clear from an early age that Mulan will not conform to what is expected of her, and when she reaches adulthood, and her ailing father is summoned to join the war against invading Rouran tribes, she takes his sword and armour and sneaks off to join the Wei army in his place.
At this point, you have to ignore the fact that Zhao Wei is one of China’s most strikingly beautiful actresses, and simply accept Mulan’s not particularly convincing attempt to disguise herself as a man. There are strict rules about no women being allowed in the army, and Mulan cannot let her guard down for a second. When she is recognised by childhood friend and fellow soldier Tiger (Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie), she has to convince him to keep her secret, but very soon she faces a far more serious threat to her true identity being revealed.
After admitting to the theft of another soldier’s pendant in order to avoid a strip search, Mulan is scheduled for execution, but when Rouran fighters launch a surprise attack, she is released by a young officer, Wentai (Chen Kun), and proves herself in battle by killing the Rouran general. Mulan and Wentai both rise quickly through the ranks of the army, and develop a special bond that is central to the latter half of the film.
As generals, Mulan and Wentai enjoy great success, but when a new, more ruthlessly ambitious Rouran leader emerges, they are tested in ways that neither could have foreseen…
On the surface, Mulan: Legendary Warrior is an epic war film, full of impressively choreographed battle scenes and military strategising, but, at its heart, it is also a well written drama in which the central characters, rather than the action sequences, are the film’s driving force. In lesser hands, the burgeoning romantic bond between Mulan and Wentai could have been overplayed, but it is to Jingle Ma and writer Zhang Ting’s credit that this is not the case in Mulan: Legendary Warrior.
There are moments when Mulan and Wentai appear to be reaching breaking point, and you half expect them to give in to their feelings and fall into each other’s arms as a soaring string section breaks out on the soundtrack, but what little physical contact there is between the two is sparingly shown and relatively understated. Even here, the idea of putting their country and their army before their own desires could have come across as bombastic, but Jingle Ma adeptly balances Mulan and Wentei’s commitment to duty with their mutual frustrations and human yearnings.
Zhao Wei is superb as Mulan, shifting convincingly from full-blooded fervour to anguished vulnerability, steely determination to forlorn resignation, making it easy to forget that she is only slightly more convincing as a man than Russell Crowe would be as Anne Frank. As Wentai, Chen Kun is inevitably overshadowed by Wei, though he more than succeeds in conveying his character’s conflicted interests, and the simmering chemistry between himself and Wei is vital to the film’s overall tone.
The relationship between Mulan and Wei may give Mulan: Legendary Warrior its backbone, but it’s a relationship that could not exist without the war between the Wei dynasty and nomadic Rouran tribes, and Ma Jingle goes to great lengths to ensure the battle scenes and the background against which the war takes place are as believable as possible. Where some directors would offer a cursory explanation for the conflict and then dive head first into a CGI-aided orgy of violence, Ma Jingle reaps the rewards of excellent cinematography that makes the most of some stunning locations and a consistently engaging narrative.
Mulan: Legendary Warrior isn’t exactly innovative, and it doesn’t really add anything new to a story that has been told many times, but it’s an expertly crafted film that fuses war and romance genres in a highly absorbing way. JG
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