The Warlords

Met up with my jc friends after work to watch The Warlords. It is a battle movie set in the 1860s where warlords and bandits roam freely in the early days of China.

The show starts off methodically with a tad too messy fighting scenes and a typical storyline about a guy who survived the onslaught of enemy troops and joining a group of bandits to survive amid the poverty and suppression. Jet Li plays the title role as the hero leading his battalions to invade numerous cities, while Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro are his sworn blood brothers as well as acting commanders to aid in his mission for glory.

The second half of the movie, it gets better and better from the Suzhou battle onwards as the internal conflicts spiral out of control resulting in tragedies of epic proportions. Peter Chan, first time director of war movies, does an amazing job indeed. He infuses much moral decisions into this war movie and the full blown consequences are fully depicted in the big screen. The drama in the non-battle scenes are as engaging as the spectacular battle scenes and it is devastating, chilling and tragic.

The character developments for Da Ge (Jet Li) and Erhu (Andy Lau) are good and we get inside the individual characters and understand the rationale behind their decisions. Their acting is commendable and it is searing with much emotions. This movie is nothing short of an impressive epic.