SYNOPSIS:
Before the unification of China, thousands of soldiers encounter
many adversities, and the brutal challenge of survival often
brings out the worst human instincts. But valiant Lu Chenkang
belongs to a different breed. He is brave, loyal and extremely
skilled in the art of war. Nevertheless, he is kind-hearted
and averse to murder. Though he has a pet wolf cub, he keeps
his own animal instincts at bay. When his commander and friend,
General Zhang Anliang is badly wounded, Lu takes over command
of the troops. Forced to find shelter in the village of the
mysterious Harran tribe, he discovers a beautiful young woman
hiding in his refuge. She fights Lu in every way she can before
surrendering to his passionate embrace. She seems to possess
the strange ability to take his mind to a place where memories
collide with dreams and legends - a place where humans were
once wolves.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Tian
Zhuangzhuang’s “The Warrior and the Wolf”
tries to infuse arthouse sensibilities into the commercial
period war epic that the burgeoning China film market has
fashioned into a genre in recent years. Ambitious though this
may be, the result is far less satisfying. The acclaimed director
of “Springtime in a Small Town” and “The
Go Master” stumbles on many fronts, chief of which is
his ability to deliver an engaging story.
Adapted from the Japanese novel by Yasushi Inoue by Tian himself,
the story is really just a simple love story between a disillusioned
general, Lu Chengkang (Jo Odagiri), and a village girl (Maggie
Q) from a cursed nomadic tribe whom Lu crosses paths with
on his journey back to his homeland after a disastrous war
on the border regions. Pacing his story glacially, Tian takes
almost half an hour to set up the backstory to the encounter
between Lu and said girl.
Worse so, this buildup is unnecessarily confusing, thanks
to Tian’s muddling choice of visuals over exposition.
Alternating between noisy battlefield scenes and quiet intimate
scenes, Tian’s idea of continuity is explain after the
fact what just happened with a paragraph across the screen-
almost as if it were a lazy afterthought. Still, if this opening
remains oddly compelling, it is because of the breathtaking
vistas that cinematographer Wang Yu uses to portray the starkness
and the desolation of the landscape in which the characters
inhabit.
Against that backdrop, Tian tries to convince its audience
that Lu’s repeated successful attempts at raping cursed
Harran village girl will eventually lead her to fall in love
with him. Besides the fact that there is something very morally
wrong with this supposition, Tian’s storytelling just
isn’t persuasive enough to sell this absurd turn of
events. And voyeurs please take note- you won’t see
any salacious rape scenes in this film, just the movement
of flesh against flesh shrouded in shadow.
So for pretty much two-thirds of the film, Maggie Q and Jo
Odagiri go about their nightly copulation, while trying to
keep their skanky affairs clandestine from the rest of the
tribe and the rest of the troops. Of course, if you’ve
heard anything about this film, you’d know that there’s
also a supernatural element involved that only really comes
about towards the last half-hour of the movie. By then, Tian
has left his audience too long out in the cold to get them
to care much about what happens or how it all ends.
Indeed, for all the positive buzz this film was garnering
prior to its release, there must have been a logical explanation
why it was unceremoniously dumped in a handful of theatres
in Singapore. Watching the film however one understands why-
instead of some epic historical action drama that was promised,
this is a mishmash of Tian’s arthouse inclinations with
the appetite of a mainstream Asian audience looking for the
next period war epic. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t
cut it either way, and just like the odd casting of Maggie
Q and Jo Odagiri (both actors are not conversant in Mandarin
and therefore dubbed over), this ill-conceived movie is just
as awkward and unfulfilling.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Just a Making Of that doesn’t
explain why this poorly conceived project got greenlit in
the first place- with some moolah from our very own Mediacorp
Raintree Pictures no less.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1-
though it doesn’t really make a difference. Most of
the audio in the 5.1 track is still concentrated in the front
speakers anyway. Picture is sharp but needs better contrast-
some scenes are just lit too badly to discern what is going
on.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Gabriel Chong
Posted on 18 March 2010
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