The Emperor's Shadow
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Movie Reviews of The Emperor's Shadow
Movie Review: Bow Wow!!
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't know why this movie got bad reviews because I think it was wonderful. I just love that Bow Wow song and aside from the absolute guresome scenes of beheading done with ease like taking a coffe break the movie was awesome. I thought the characters were well developed and the river scene was great. That song just stayed in my head for days. I love movies about China but always have a box of tissue handy since they always have a tear jerker scene or two.Movie Review: Decent....
Summary: 3 Stars
This film was overall decent and worth seeing if you've got limited access to Chinese historical films.There were a lot of things in the movie that just plain did not make sense (and these things had nothing to do with translation). A lot of things just are not explained whatsoever. The movie starts out with Gao Jianli's mother breastfeeding both Gao Jianli and Ying Zheng. No information whatsoever as to how on earth Ying Zheng got from his probable birthplace in modern-day Shaanxi province all the way to the kingdom of Yan, a few hundred miles away, in the present-day areas of Hebei and Liaoning provinces, Beijing and Tianjin. The movie goes forward about 12 years to Gao Jianli just hanging around a prison courtyard playing the guqin.........I know it was a period of war and conquests but what on EARTH is this kid doing hanging around a jailyard?! And then a whole bunch of people are brought in and proclaimed as Qin captives to be executed. Among them (what a coincidence!), and positioned for execution right next to Gao Jianli (what a coincidence again!) playin' Jailyard Guqin, is Ying Zheng! Now hang on a second.....two minutes ago it looked as if Ying Zheng had been raised and maybe born in Yan, but here he is being hauled in with these other people from hundreds of miles away.
There are countless other things in the movie that are along the same lines - bizarre happenings that are totally unexplained and you can't necessarily figure out, even if you have (like myself) a good knowledge of Chinese history.
While the guqin music in the movie is nice (although a little redundant), the scored music in this movie is horrendous. Zhao Jiping usually is very tasteful with his usage of music in film, but this is an exception for sure. The authenticity of the setting, both in time and location, is ruined by the scored music, which consists of totally Western-style melodramatic orchestra+chorus for the most part. I love how when the army sings the Qin anthem (totally Western sounding) they're all Western operatic baritones!!!!!!! GIVE ME A BREAK! I know it's supposed to be this grandiose epic movie, but at least try to be real. This is the sort of stuff that you'd see in an old American movie from the 40's and 50's like Spartacus or The Ten Commandments where a group of supposedly average people open their mouths to sing a song and out comes Joan Sutherland and Kurt Moll. One reviewer said (in other words) that the orchestration helps in enhancing the magnitude and large scale of events going on. You can use Chinese music in the exact same way. What was Zhao thinking? Totally cheesy, unrealistic, and melodramatic as hell.
I do have to point out that they got authenticity in the areas of costume and props, but the music is just horrible.
Also, I speak Mandarin, and some of the translations are reallllllly bad. And speaking of Mandarin, I think that a little clarification on correct spelling with Pinyin (romanized Chinese) is in order for some of the previous reviewers. The guy's name was Ying Zheng. Ching is an outdated or Taiwanese way of spelling either Jing or Qing in Mandarin (qing if you forgot the apostrophe between the ch and the i). The kingdom in which Ying Zheng was king and where he later proclaimed himself the first emperor is called Qin. Note, it is not called QinG (or Ching/Ch'ing for our apparently Taiwanese reviewers) The first emperor of Qin is correctly written: Qin Shi Huangdi. Sorry, but I just can't handle these butcherings of Chinese spellings.
A good movie if you want to learn a little about Chinese history, as it portrays Ying Zheng as who he most likely really was: a ruthless emperor who was willing to stop at nothing and kill thousands upon thousands in order to unite the Warring States.
Movie Review: A So So Chinese Epic
Summary: 2 Stars
The First Emperor of China is a very controversial historical figure. Even to this day historians are not sure what to say about him. On the one hand he was very brutal. So brutal that shortly after his death, his dynasty was overthrown. However, it was he who unified China, started to build the Great Wall, had the Terra Cotta Warriors built. So, do the ends justify the means? Do we accept his brutality as a neccessity to unify China? Historians are still not sure and this is the question that both this film and the Emperor and the Assassin deal with.Though this story takes place after the events in Emperor and the Assassin we must compare the two films. And the bottom line is that this is the weaker of the two movies. There are some visually stunning scenes in this picture. But as a whole, the story does not hold up.
Yes the filmmaker shows us the conflicts this emperor faced. We do get a very human look at him. But again, Emperor and the Assassin does the same and is a much better movie.
So, I do not recommend this film. It has a few good scenes but on the whole it fails. I strongly recommend watching Chen Kaige Emperor and the Assassin instead
Movie Review: The Emperor's Shadow
Summary: 1 Stars
Save your money. Subtitles ruined what would otherwise be a "half" decent movie. With today's technology you would think they would have released an English version of this movie for North America.
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