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Asian cinema: Hong Kong film
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Review | Dynasty Warriors movie review: video game adaptation adds fantastical violence to Romance of the Three Kingdoms lore

  • This ambitious adaptation of the video game based on the epic novel is let down by the casting
  • The action takes second place to the storyline, and the film often lapses into unintentional comedy

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Louis Koo as Lu Bu in a still from Dynasty Warriors (category IIB, Cantonese) directed by Roy Chow.
Edmund Lee

2.5/5 stars

A big-budget movie adaptation of a popular Japanese video game series, itself based on a classical Chinese novel which freely dramatised history, Dynasty Warriors was, by its conception, always at risk of losing its way in a hodgepodge of ideas and influences. And so it proves with this bizarrely paced and only intermittently diverting movie by Hong Kong director Roy Chow Hin-yeung (Knockout).

Make no mistake: it is a high-wire act for any filmmaker looking to blend the fantastical action in the hack-and-slash fighting game Dynasty Warriors – in which a swing of the magical sword could send hundreds of enemy soldiers flying, as if you’ve just detonated an invisible bomb – with the realistic character construction and intricate plotting in Luo Guanzhong’s epic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

The cartoonish violence from the game turns out to be mere seasoning in this surprisingly story-driven movie, which begins with arguably its best battle scene, as future warlord and perennial good guy Liu Bei (Tony Yang Yo-ning) and his two blood brothers, Guan Yu (Han Geng) and Zhang Fei (Justin Cheung Kin-seng), help Han official Dong Zhuo (Lam Suet) suppress the Yellow Turban Rebellion.

Dong then installs himself as Han’s de facto ruler (and the film’s pantomime villain), and is joined by the formidable general Lu Bu (Louis Koo Tin-lok). Meanwhile, Liu meets up with a coalition of feudal lords – including future rival Cao Cao (Wang Kai) – looking to counter Dong, and comes to command his own army. The movie, clearly with a (by now highly unlikely) sequel in mind, climaxes with Lu’s aborted fight with Liu and co.

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