Battle of the Warriors (2006)

Battle of the Warriors
2006
Foreign/Action
Andy Lau

Who is up for some historical epic Chinese action? I know I am. Of course Red Cliff is my most anticipated movie in that area, but before I watched that I decided to check out The Battle of the Warriors. In the movie Andy Lau plays Ge Li a man recruited by a small village to help protect it from a massive army preparing to destroy it. For those who don't know, Andy Lau is basically the Chinese George Clooney. I enjoy his acting so the fact that he was the star played a big part in me checking it out. As expected there are sweeping shots full of hundreds of Chinese soldiers and beautiful landscapes. Even though one side is a massive army the movie does not choose to focus solely on huge battle scenes. It deals quite a bit with the strategies Ge Li uses to defeat a superior army. This makes sense since the original name of the comic book the movie is based off of is The Battle of the Wits. They probably should have just kept that title since Battle of the Warriors is probably the most generic sounding movie title ever. Some of the plans he comes up are really impressive. He seems to know what the enemy is going to do before it actually happens, and how to best defend against it. The movie also deals with how the leaders of the village react when an outsider suddenly gains great support from the local population. I probably would have preferred a few more action set pieces, but this movie wasn't going for that sort of feel. A few of the supporting characters just aren't interesting and seem to slow up the whole show when they appear on screen. It is a minor complaint but there are several scenes where they use CGI special effects and a few of those look really awful. Andy Lau delivers a fine performance, living up to my expectations. This isn't the best historical Chinese epic I have seen, but it still a very solid and entertaining flick.

3 out of 5 Stars
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