The Emperor and the Assassin
by Kaige Chen
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Haifeng Ding, Li Gong, Xiaohe Lu, Xuejian Li, Yongfei GuDirector: Kaige Chen
Brand: LI,GONG
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 162 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-06-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of The Emperor and the Assassin
Movie Review: Moving-Making On A Vast Scale; History In The Raw; The Timelessness Of Emotion
Summary: 5 Stars
For the spectacle of its scale---extras numbering into the tens of thousands in some scenes; sets the size of small cities; its period details intricate to the most minute degree---and for the engrossing story it tells, The Emperor And The Assassin is a truly amazing motion picture. Available in a subtitled edition, this Mandarin-language motion picture from China's Beijing Studios is slow-moving, huge in every meaning of the word, and challenging to take in. It is also an epic unlike any made in the United States in several generations.
The background information is this: 2300 years ago when China was fragmented into a number of warring petty states, the leader of the militant Kingdom of Qin felt it was his destiny to conquer all of China and bring it under the rule of a single dynasty---naturally his own. This violent, fearless warrior-king, played by with haughty charisma by the actor Li Xuejian, was not content to merely absorb rival territories, he, with his legions of chariots and miles-long lines of armored foot soldiers, sought to obliterate them past any possibility of future revolt. His cruelty, which he justified to himself by proclaiming coming glories that would possible only in a nation united under a single banner, is at times truly horrid to behold.
This visionary king, Ying Zheng, knew also that mighty though his armies were, not all of his foes could be made to topple except via pressure applied from within. To this end Ying Zheng enlists the aid of his one-time lover, the radiantly beautiful Lady Zhao. The king details to her a plot by which she is to pretend to have fallen from his favor, and out of her hatred convince others at a rival court that she harbors a wish for revenge upon him. He sends her to a powerful enemy kingdom, Yan, her face branded, her reputation tarnished, disgraced, fallen, and there she is to use all her wiles to convince an assassin to fall in love with her and avenge her name by murdering the king who had so abused her. A pretext for war with Yan thereby achieved, Ying Zheng will then invade his foe with allies outraged at this would-be regicide (a dark crime under Confucian Chinese morality).
Ever loyal, Lady Zhao obeys her king and travels to Yan and earns the trust of an assassin, a formidable but somewhat pitiful figure, tortured by and in his own past, unable to find peace, pathetic in his love for the conniving Lady Zhou, whom he loves, unaware of her impending betrayal of him. Lady Zhou primes the assassin's hatred of the King, and fills his head with notions of the justice that will be served by the revenge he'll obtain for both of them. All seems to be transpiring according to Ying Zheng's plans, until his own widescale cruelty toward any and all foreign kingdoms in his path begins to disgust even Lady Zhou. (In one haunting scene we see masses of children dying as they are driven from the height of a fortified wall, and the question of whether any earthly prize, even a unified China, could be justified by such evil is raised and answered with the same resounding NO that Zhou feels.)
Turning at last against her king and lover, Lady Zhou sends the assassin off, now hoping he will succeed in his quest and rid China of a megalomaniacal monster of a man.
Welding together ancient Chinese history and cinematic storytelling of god-like proportions, The Emperor And The Assassin finds a perfect medium in DVD format, and brings to the west the tale of one minor incident within one of the bloodiest and most destructive periods in the entire history of the world.
Summary of The Emperor and the Assassin
Ying Zheng, the King of Qin, has one driving ambition: to unify China's seven kingdoms into one empire. As this goal turns into a bloody quest, the emperor's lover begins to question her loyalty to him.Genre: Foreign Film - Chinese
Rating: R
Release Date: 13-JUN-2000
Media Type: DVD
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