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| Warriors of Heaven and Earth |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 118 |
| Public Rating: 7.77 (13 votes) |
Director: He Ping |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Action (western) |
Year: 2003 |
| Writer(s): He Ping |
| Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics |
| Reviewed by: Le Apprenti |
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How to make a Western? First, the ingredients:
1) a badass-type hero - a renegage soldier, along with his trusty companions
2) a law-enforcing town marshal - an emissary to the Emperor
3) a distress-looking damsel - the general's daughter
4) a hapless victim - the monk
5) a main villain - the warlord
6) main villain's minions - warlord's bandits and additional raiders
7) old West locale - western China
8) weapons - swords
Mix them together in an old-fashioned "good vs. evil" premise someplace remote and in a distant past. Spice it with many doses of fast, furious action. Keep the showdowns highly dramatic. Keep the story simple and conventional from begining to end.
With guns in place of swords and cowboys for swordsman, Warriors of Heaven and Earth could very well pass for a Western. Stylistic similar in narration and plot with American's favorite classic genre, it has a mythical quality that - for a brief moment of the entire film - turns its characters into legends in their own time of 700 AD in Tang-Dynasty China. Every scene is set up for a "do or die" confrontation. The action is furious and the consequences dire. Despite the seemingly insurmountable faced by the protagonists, you want to root for them. Plus, it is set in the West ... Western China that is.
Before the shootouts .. I mean swordfights begin, the calamity has to be set up. A caravan transports a priceless, mystical pagoda, which is sought by a Turkish overlord who enlists a town's warlord to procure it. After a sandstorm wipes out the entire entourage save for a soldier and a monk, enter Lieutenant "Butcher" Li (Jiang Wen), a former solider of the Tang Imperial army who turns renegade for refusing to kill women and children prisoners. Since then, he has been doing mercenary work while his loyal posse that renegaded with him - Wu "Long-haired Scorpion" Lao-Er, Ma "the Lantern" Gun, Bai "Horseshoe Maker" Tuzi and Cao "One-eyed Eagle" Jian - settled down in the Western Lake. The Butcher is hired to transport the caravan, whose most valued cargo is kept secret from him, to the Tang China's capital of Changan.
However, the Butcher is still a wanted man, pursued by Japanese-hailed Lai Xi (Nakai Kîchi), an emmisary of the Emperor. Lai Xi is to capture and execute the Butcher as a final assignment before he is allowed to return home after being away for 25 years. Joining him is Wen Zhu (Vicki Zhao, the younger sister in So Close), daughter of a Tang general. She is the film's sole beauty, which she does so nicely and nothing else. Lai's easy disposal of a local criminal in a town called "Big Steed Village" is witnessed by its warlord Master An (Wang Xueqi). Like most formulaic villains, An indulges in a perculiar hobby while his men do his bidding. In his case, it is playing the erhu (Chinese violin).
All the characters are briefly introduced, none are in-depth, but they are at least minimally engaging. The stern Butcher is bound by responsibility to safeguard the caravan at the risk of his own life. Lai is a steely-eyed, silent-type emissary who is as dedicated in protecting the Butcher (to kill after his mission is accomplished) as he is honorable in helping him ward off An's forces. Every one of his fight sequences are outstanding. His duel with the Butcher is an edge-of-the-seat feeling. Among the Butcher's posse, the Lantern is slightly dim-witted, One-eyed Eagle a no-nonsense type, while Long-haired Scorpion is enthusiatic. The caravan soldier is goofy and simple-minded. One of the Butcher's hired guards, an old army outpost guard aptly named "Old Die Hard", provides some comic relief. An is a cliche arch-villain who seldom fights and hardly excites when he does fight. Only his sparring with the Turkish soldiers - in a non-combat setting - is worth looking.
The elements are cliches of a typical action adventure flick. The bad guys know the true identity of the object in question before the good guys. The good guys' demise are emphasized to contrast the relative numbers between them and the outnumbered warlord's forces. The damsel always tries to fight back but in a believable manner (not by sudden transformation from helpless damsel to ass-kicker that's prevalent in American action cinema). The main hero does not always get to kill the main villain; sometimes, the main villain bites the dust ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. No matter what, the finale action sequence has to top everything else before it. And it does, with pyrotechnics, swords, arrows, extras and furious fighting galore.
When all is said and done, the hero rides off west into the sunset accompanied by his lady. Swords or guns, Warriors of Heaven and Earth is a Western at heart and can be enjoyed as one.
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