The Empress And The Warriors Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

Good but gooey

As always the production team deliver something that is gorgeaus to look at cinematically but the film falls foul on being over schmaltzy hollywood style and so is no where near as good as Hero or Flying daggers

Slow film but stunning imagery

I'll be perfectly honest here, whether a film is good or bad, provided it's a Chinese historical war or fantasy film I will watch it no matter what.

I'll start with the good news, I thought the Donnie Yen scenes were as spectacular as always. Very realistic, which is unusual for him, but at the same time he felt like one of the bosses in the Dynasty Warriors games, practically strong enough to take down entire regiments.

I think this movie was very slow and in some parts borderline boring, I found myself not really caring much about the progress of the Empress' love triangle and I was just waiting for the next Donnie Yen action sequence. I couldn't help feeling that there was no particular chemistry between any characters, romance or friendship. Some parts felt rushed also, I think an extra 30 minutes or so to delve deeper into the story and add one or two more fights and I would happily have rated this a 4 to 5 star.

Now I may be biased here expecting some sort of non-stop action rope-fest which is what China is brilliant at, I will admit, though slow paced this film is very vibrant and beautiful.

I think that many art-critics would rate this movie highly. But I yearned for just one or two more action sequences. That being said I still am glad I watched it, it is FAR from a bad movie.