This movie is directed by the legendary Tsui Hark, features one of my favourite actors with Jet Li and is about Chinese legends and myths. This sounds quite promising but the final result is only of an average quality and therefor rather disappointing.
The main problem is that Tsui Hark and Jet Li have become older but especially the director forgot to progress. He still does his movies the same way he did it in the late eighties or in the early nineties when they became international blockbusters. This style simply fails to impress nowadays. The choreographies are still bombastic and detailed but they feel even more exaggerated and artificial than usual because this movie is completely overloaded with special CGI effects. Jet Li has also become older and doesn't do the impressive fighting scenes he did in the past. He is quite underused in this flick.
All these things wouldn't be so bad if Jet Li incarnated a good character. In movies such as "Fearless", he proved that he is not only an excellent fighter but also a credible actor. If Tsui Hark had created an intriguing story, the high amount of effects wouldn't have harmed this movie. That's what the main problem is. The movie includes no interesting story line and is rather confusing. The story is very tough to follow because there are many impostors and conspiracies going on which would normally be interesting but as the amount of intrigues is too elevated, the formula simply doesn't work and one gets quite mixed up in the end. A few potentially interesting characters play only minor roles such as the Tartars while I feel almost no empathy with the main actors. Jet Li's acting remains faceless and if there are a few good actors in this film, then these are the female ones such as Xun Zhou and especially Gwei Lun-Mei.
Both Tsui Hark and Jet Li must though change their styles and skills to still create stunning movies these years. Both deliver a rather lukewarm performance and can't convince. The movie kicks off with a few interesting scenes and special effects but as soon as the story takes places in the desert tavern, the movie gets worse. The effects in the final third of the film are overwhelming and unnecessary and make the whole thing rather hard to sit through as it feels like a cheesy Walt Disney production. Any fan of both the main actor and the director should go for the original movies and ignore this one. The People's Republic of China seems to do the same mistakes as Hollywood these days and invests in useless remakes and sequels instead of focusing on fresh stories which I simply can't support as the originals were way better and innovating for their time. This here is for true fans only.
