I agree with other reviewers that this film has been overlooked as a martial arts action flick. The movie offers two bona-fide stars, Jiang Wen and Donnie Yen, one who can act and one who can fight. Production values are high with nicely detailed "historical" temples and towns and costly on-scene locations amidst China's "eternal" hills and forests. The directors, known for their earlier Infernal Affairs, do a good job in creating a seamless narrative that follows every Hollywood convention in terms of story and character development. At the same time, they include the occasional cinematic surprise, such as the extended scene which closes the doors on all the action, only allowing the viewer an acoustic glimpse of the butt-kicking taking place (note that the 15th century Ming-dynasty novel actually does something similar in the fourth chapter, when Guan Yu rides out after Cao Cao offers him a cup of warm wine and returns, after much noise drifting over from the battlefield, to toss the decapitated head of his enemy to the ground. When he finally accepts the cup of wine, it is still warm).
Personally, what I found most interesting is the way the movie reinterprets standard "history." Tales of The Three Kingdoms are a dime a dozen and usually it is Cao Cao who is depicted as a ruthless villain. This movie instead shows him as a thoughtful statesman who has no choice but make sometimes unpopular decisions (such as killing thousands, ten thousands of people). Unlike a previous reviewer, I have no problems with this deviation of the standard narrative because it is "ahistorical." Most standard histories, at least up until the 11th century, were more sympathetic to Cao Cao than Liu Bei and it is only in the more popular versions of the story, most notably the Ming novel, that Liu Bei becomes the ideal ruler and Cao Cao the heartless usurper.
What interested me though was the way this particular rewrite serves as an example of a whole host of recent Hong Kong-PRC co-productions which use historical analogy to suggest that an unpopular central ruler from the north may actually not be all that bad if you desire a unified, peaceful, and of course strong China. First there was Zhang Yimou with "Hero," who told us that the First Emperor of China may well have been a much misunderstood enlightened despot. Now we have Alan Mak and Felix Chong suggesting that the white-faced Cao Cao may actually have been a pretty good bloke. Of course, for China to be unified, sacrifices have to be made. That was, of course, the message of Zhang Yimou in "Hero," with its final scene of ritual mourning, and, yes, here a similar scene of thoughtful mourning is dutifully recreated. And so throughout the film Donnie Yen suffers nobly; he gives up the love of his life, gets pelted by outraged villagers, is willing to be poisoned by a dubious friend, but the sacrifice that got to me most was poor Donnie's voice; dubbing his idiosyncratic Cantonese into standard Mandarin is just plain villainy.
Personally, what I found most interesting is the way the movie reinterprets standard "history." Tales of The Three Kingdoms are a dime a dozen and usually it is Cao Cao who is depicted as a ruthless villain. This movie instead shows him as a thoughtful statesman who has no choice but make sometimes unpopular decisions (such as killing thousands, ten thousands of people). Unlike a previous reviewer, I have no problems with this deviation of the standard narrative because it is "ahistorical." Most standard histories, at least up until the 11th century, were more sympathetic to Cao Cao than Liu Bei and it is only in the more popular versions of the story, most notably the Ming novel, that Liu Bei becomes the ideal ruler and Cao Cao the heartless usurper.
What interested me though was the way this particular rewrite serves as an example of a whole host of recent Hong Kong-PRC co-productions which use historical analogy to suggest that an unpopular central ruler from the north may actually not be all that bad if you desire a unified, peaceful, and of course strong China. First there was Zhang Yimou with "Hero," who told us that the First Emperor of China may well have been a much misunderstood enlightened despot. Now we have Alan Mak and Felix Chong suggesting that the white-faced Cao Cao may actually have been a pretty good bloke. Of course, for China to be unified, sacrifices have to be made. That was, of course, the message of Zhang Yimou in "Hero," with its final scene of ritual mourning, and, yes, here a similar scene of thoughtful mourning is dutifully recreated. And so throughout the film Donnie Yen suffers nobly; he gives up the love of his life, gets pelted by outraged villagers, is willing to be poisoned by a dubious friend, but the sacrifice that got to me most was poor Donnie's voice; dubbing his idiosyncratic Cantonese into standard Mandarin is just plain villainy.