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China 2008
Director: Daniel Lee
Cast: Andy Lau, Sammo Hung, Maggie Q, Andy On
Release Date: April 3rd 2008
Running Length: 1 hour 38 minutes
Review of the Movie
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THREE KINGDOMS:
RESURRECTION
Of The DRAGON |
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What a great April for the legendary tale of Three Kingdoms is presented on a big screen in a fantastic directing! Ever since my days in college, I've been reading this tale for quite many times either through comic books or by reading the strategy or biography of Zhuge Liang, Sun Tzu, Sun Bin, Sima which are the famous tacticians in their respective era. How they gave order and clue to the troops by combining nature elements, weather, award/punishment, courage and soldiers formation, among others. Those words without picture alone already made me awestruck, because it's simply brilliant and genius.
And now, one of the movies that try to bring up that tale by hiring famous Hong Kong actors such as Sammo Hung, Andy Lau and even the more-famous-by-the-year Maggie Q, was released in April 2008. But the best thing is that I could easily recognize all the principal characters of the Three Kingdoms such as Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and the ever notorious Cao Cao, so I'm pretty sure that thing alone could already be a guarantee that this movie would be a great...and you know what? Gladly, I wasn't wrong, this movie is awesome! Totally awesome!
The storyline revolves around Zhao Zilong, a new soldier in Liu Bei's army. In year 228, China is divided among Three Kingdoms, Wei, Wu and Shu. These three kingdoms are constantly in war, where left the people of China is suffering. The young Zilong (Andy Lau) is registered in the Army of Shu Kingdom led by the wise Liu Bei and his sworn-brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. Zilong is given his name tag by the registration officer Luo Ping An (Sammo Hung). Both soldiers then become brothers since they're also come from the same village, Changshan. Zilong then serves Shu Kingdom in great loyalty against Shu's nemesis Cao Cao (Damian Lau) and his granddaugther Cao Ying (Maggie Q) from the Wei Kingdom, which both of them also the masters of war strategy.
TKROTD in directing facet is not just great but also artistic! The camerawork cleverly choosing the angle where it shows the facial expression of the actors, thus makes the audience feel emotionally involved with the ongoing scene. Moreover, besides being artistic, it even uses cow-skin puppet (famously known as Wayang in some nations) as an interlude.
This epic movie also provided with glorious musical soundtrack, uplifting sounds plus the solid performance from Sammo Hung and Andy Lau. Those actors are not just great in their martial arts but also in the acting world. Andy Lau in this movie is performing on his--believe it or not--130th movie! And he's not even reached the age of 50. While Sammo Hung's movie experience has dated back since the era of Bruce Lee along with Jackie Chan. Both actors chemistry is really there, their relationship is touching.
Touching? Absolutely, no tear jerking moments, but…the audience would really appreciate the sacrifice of soldiers and war generals in the time of war. The Dialogue cleverly picks the right moment to include these heart-warming scenes with lines that are actually simple and nothing fancy, but those lines hit the target.
Being an epic movie, surely the audience would expect great battle scene. Well, although there are many movies with fancy battle scenes and all the explosion, TKROTD may still be under them, nevertheless, it's not exaggerated and almost never forget to involve audience's emotion. And this Emotional Involvement is one thing that usually forgotten by other fancy epic films, which making them soulless.
TKROTD is based on a novel entitled Romance of Three Kingdoms, and although it's a novel but it's actually based on a real history and real characters. So TKROTD also employs some tactics that were written on many books as Zhuge Liang's war strategies, such as weather, loyalty, courage, friendship, and the way to win heart of the soldiers by lowering ourselves as their leader. This epic movie is not just great and fascinating in the battle but actually also deep...
This April is surely an epical month, for TKROTD was released only a few days before the upcoming The Forbidden Kingdom. And it's probably to early to say this, but TKROTD is definitely one of my favorite epic movies in 2008.
© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com
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