AFF09–The Warlords (2009)

Directed by: Peter Chan/Wai Man Yip
Written by: Tin Nam Chun/Junli Guo/Jiping He/Jianxin Huang/Jo Jo Yuet-chun Hui/Oi Wah Lam/Lan Xu/James Yuen

Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro are hard motherfuckers. But Jet Li is the hardest of them all.

Jet is Pang Qingyun, legendary general of the Qing Dynasty near the end of the 19th century. Andy is Zhao Er-Hu, his second in command. Takeshi is Zhang Wen-Xiang, the young man caught between the two of them. They have all taken the unbreakable blood oath to protect each other through it all.

Pang is basically like the Chinese Braveheart. He wants to unite China against a common enemy, the Ho army. He wants everyone to be free to live the life that they deserve. But can he uphold his own values? Or is he as corruptible as many of his superiors? And could a woman (Jinglei Xu) make him betray his blood brothers?

Er-Hu is the true idealist. He never loses sight of the values that the three of them hold dear. Wen-Xiang is…well, he’s just kind of there. He’s the “incorruptible youth” of the three, but he takes the blood oath VERY seriously.

This is the film that I thought Red Cliff was going to be. It was deadly serious and the battle scenes were bloodcurdlingly realistic. There was none of that wushu weirdness that John Woo put into his film.

Actually, this is a film that John Woo could never make. His films are all about how brotherhood makes men into the good people that they never could have been otherwise. The Warlords is all about how brotherhood can sometimes turn ugly. These guys are heroes, but they’re not particularly good people. They do some pretty terrible things in the name of peace and their own brotherhood.

Jet Li does something here that I never really thought that I would see him do: he plays a complete bastard. Oh, sure, he’s played a bad guy before, but they are few and far between. And those guys were usually a little cartoonish. Pang, though, is an asshole because, while he does things for the good of China (he thinks), they are some pretty heinous things. He’s conflicted, though, so he’s a hero.

The movie was actually far better than I was expecting. I was hoping for great, but expecting more current Jet Li. Instead, I got a whole new Jet Li. There’s basically no real martial arts in the film. It’s all war battle action. And the movie gives him a chance to really act. He’s actually a pretty amazing actor in Mandarin.

The acting across the board is really good. Andy Lau is always pretty amazing and Takeshi is doing some of the best work of his career lately. I am a little overdosed on him, though. Three movies in less than a month. Never thought that would happen unless I ended up in China.

I kind of can’t wait for this film to come out over here. It came out two years ago in China and, unfortunately, doesn’t have a real release date over here, yet. That’s too bad. I think that the US could stand to see a bit of the new Jet Li.