Kelly WandThe Emperor and the Assassin
November 18th 2006 00:37
Sometimes, reading Sprocket Holed, you might think that every obscure Asian film I pick up is just wrapped in a special veneer of greatness. You’d think that the directors of the East could do no wrong. Well, of course, that’s not true and heres a case in point.
“The Emperor and the Assassin” has sumptuous set and costume design. It has an epic scale that hasn’t been seen in Western cinema since the Nineteen Sixties. The only thing it doesn’t have is a suitable sense of narrative story telling to pull its bold ambitions off. Portrayed as a man emotionally ill equipped for the destiny chosen for him, the man who will be Emperor walks through the film like he’s in shell shock. If you gave this guy the keys to the local bread shop he’d be knocking back Valium before lunchtime. You would have to rate the chances of him uniting the ancient Kingdoms into a single nation as slim at best. He’d have to learn to stop dragging his jaw along the ground for a start.
Of course, history and the theatrical trailer already have told us that this guy is going to make the big leap from King of Qin to Emperor of China. How else is he going to earn that big tomb with all the terracotta warriors? Maybe he’ll get lucky and buy the Wonka chocolate bar with the magic ticket.
He starts off as a guy with good intentions but one or two too many facial tics. He polishes off the Kingdom of Han to the praise of friend and foe alike. By the time he goes off to take the Kingdom of Zhao, he’s genocidal, homicidal and – one suspects – suicidal. His mother has been dropping fresh siblings on the quiet fathered by her companion. I would have thought hiding one pregnancy would have been hard enough to cover up but two suggests someone wasn’t paying attention.
His girlfriend has left him because he’s been paying too much attention to military conflict and none to her. She, however, had enough respect for the dude’s lofty aspirations to come up with a plan to arrange an Assassin be sent from the Kingdom of Yan whose capture would facilitate the invasion of that province.
Oh yeah, I just remembered. The King also finds out that he has no real claim to the throne at all because he was fathered by the Prime Minister. Jeez. It seems the message here is that the more the more you get, the less you have.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. At Cannes they gave this a special jury prize for technique and, on that level, the film is dazzling. There is a lot to like about this film. It just meanders like a summer stream. Its climax is all wrong. We do not get enough screen time for the Assassin to make his final confrontation with the King mean anything. In fact, the film ends without sensible resolution. The Assassin gets into the King’s Court, pulls a blade on the monarch but not one person in the room rushes to the King’s aid. Hello.
After the ensuing fight, we’re told the King goes on to unite China but we’re not told how he does it. The guy is clearly nutty as a fruit cake and has all the support of a jock with a broken strap. Just how he pulled that one off would have made for some kind of story.
Is this film worth seeing. Yes. But for god sake use the original language version with subtitles. The actors they got to do the dubbing take a pile of over played facial gestures on screen and decide to run with them vocally. The result is embarrassing. I know this because my son was feeling lazy and demanded the dubbed version.
If I’d have written this review based solely on that experience, this review would be utterly scathing. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and re-watched it in Chinese. It was much better but I still think they needed a script editor.
“The Emperor and the Assassin” has sumptuous set and costume design. It has an epic scale that hasn’t been seen in Western cinema since the Nineteen Sixties. The only thing it doesn’t have is a suitable sense of narrative story telling to pull its bold ambitions off. Portrayed as a man emotionally ill equipped for the destiny chosen for him, the man who will be Emperor walks through the film like he’s in shell shock. If you gave this guy the keys to the local bread shop he’d be knocking back Valium before lunchtime. You would have to rate the chances of him uniting the ancient Kingdoms into a single nation as slim at best. He’d have to learn to stop dragging his jaw along the ground for a start.
Of course, history and the theatrical trailer already have told us that this guy is going to make the big leap from King of Qin to Emperor of China. How else is he going to earn that big tomb with all the terracotta warriors? Maybe he’ll get lucky and buy the Wonka chocolate bar with the magic ticket.
He starts off as a guy with good intentions but one or two too many facial tics. He polishes off the Kingdom of Han to the praise of friend and foe alike. By the time he goes off to take the Kingdom of Zhao, he’s genocidal, homicidal and – one suspects – suicidal. His mother has been dropping fresh siblings on the quiet fathered by her companion. I would have thought hiding one pregnancy would have been hard enough to cover up but two suggests someone wasn’t paying attention.
His girlfriend has left him because he’s been paying too much attention to military conflict and none to her. She, however, had enough respect for the dude’s lofty aspirations to come up with a plan to arrange an Assassin be sent from the Kingdom of Yan whose capture would facilitate the invasion of that province.
Oh yeah, I just remembered. The King also finds out that he has no real claim to the throne at all because he was fathered by the Prime Minister. Jeez. It seems the message here is that the more the more you get, the less you have.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. At Cannes they gave this a special jury prize for technique and, on that level, the film is dazzling. There is a lot to like about this film. It just meanders like a summer stream. Its climax is all wrong. We do not get enough screen time for the Assassin to make his final confrontation with the King mean anything. In fact, the film ends without sensible resolution. The Assassin gets into the King’s Court, pulls a blade on the monarch but not one person in the room rushes to the King’s aid. Hello.
After the ensuing fight, we’re told the King goes on to unite China but we’re not told how he does it. The guy is clearly nutty as a fruit cake and has all the support of a jock with a broken strap. Just how he pulled that one off would have made for some kind of story.
Is this film worth seeing. Yes. But for god sake use the original language version with subtitles. The actors they got to do the dubbing take a pile of over played facial gestures on screen and decide to run with them vocally. The result is embarrassing. I know this because my son was feeling lazy and demanded the dubbed version.
If I’d have written this review based solely on that experience, this review would be utterly scathing. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and re-watched it in Chinese. It was much better but I still think they needed a script editor.
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