Drama lost in action in The Warlords - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Drama lost in action in The Warlords

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Festooned with Hong Kong film awards, Peter Chan’s 19th-century epic about the long and bloody war between the corrupt Qing dynasty and the Taiping rebels has a starry cast, myriad well-mounted battle scenes and a just about adequate screenplay. The conflict cost as many lives as the First World War and many of those casualties are laid out before us in the picture.

It has Jet Li as General Pang who, after being betrayed by another Qing commander, joins up with two marauding bandits (Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro), falls in love with the wife of the former (Xu Jinglei) and ends up corrupted by his hunger for power.

Li’s performance is always watchable and the whole has some impressive moments. But the action often gets in the way of the drama — which is what generally happens when there’s an enormous budget and an obvious pitch for box-office appeal.

The Warlords
Cert: 15

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