Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants

[Drunk Monk]

That was a lot of Chinese culture. A bit too much for my meager experience. 

This film is based on a classic wuxia novel by Jin Yong that has been made into many movies but it's epic so those movies only catch a few chapters a go. There's also some TV serials but I've not watched them. I've not read it because there wasn't a good translation of it in English. Maybe there is now. 

The beginning of this film races through a bunch of stuff that was surely better explained in the book before launching on the chapters it would focus on. Then it skipped back and forth through time. It was mostly about the romance between Guo Jing, the adopted Han son of Genghis Khan, and Huang Rong. That's right. Big romance. And there's a third wheel - Khan's daughter, the princess, who is betrothed to Guo Jing. The mongol saber vs dog beating staff fight between the princess and Huang Rong is fun, on stable rooftops. Unfortunately that's the only Kung Fu fight. The rest is martial sorcery. 

This is directed by Tsui Hark, the bannerman of the Fant-Asia movement of the late 70s, the man behind the magnificent Chinese Ghost Story franchise, Green Snake, Iron Monkey - he could do compelling fantasy without CGI. The magic martial arts fight between Guo Jing and the Toad master is the pinnacle of the film - a dazzling magic fight scene which will surely show up on YouTube soon. 

There's some other big scenes, huge panoramas accentuated with CGI horizons, virtually seemless even in AMC Laser (better than xenon). Some big sets with lots of people. And some expert cinematograhy to show it off. Hark can still move a camera. There's some nice big battlefield stuff SPOILER ALERT but the ultimate siege doesn't happen END SPOILER. It was a cinematic watch.

But the plot and pacing was exhausting. I didn't know this chapter and had a hard time keeping up. The film assumes you know the story and doesn't fill a lot of gaps. It was a beautiful film but it didn't work for me storywise. It was too choppy. I'll be curious to hear from friends who read it. Payhuan Shiao (my boss at Immortal) told me he grew up with it and has read it cover to cover four times. The romance had some moments, the fights were fun but there weren't enough of them, and there was some novel stuff in how the sorcery was represented - not groundbreaking novel but almost pushing the edge.

Not D00M reccommended. 

I have two more films I want to see from the Lunar New Year rush but probably not theatrically - Detective Chinatown 1900 (that did get a NA release but I didn't catch it and I haven't kept up with that franchise) and I Am What I Am 2.