The story, which had been filmed at least twice before, and had also been adapted for Shanghai-style Peking Operas, is based on a real event which has been called one of the “Four Mysteries of the Qing dynasty”. Known as Zhang Wenxiang Assassinates Ma, it is the story of the assassination of ambitious Qing general Ma Xinyi by one of his associates for a still-unknown reason.

The Taiping Rebellion, which took place from 1851 to around 1860, provides the setting, and is a fascinating period of Chinese history to use as the background for an action film. The Taiping rebels were Christian revolutionaries led by Hong Xiuquan, an unhinged individual who had combined Protestantism with Chinese folk beliefs, and had proclaimed himself the brother of Jesus Christ.

The rebels, who were predominantly Hakka Chinese, formed an army of around two million men and women that battered the troops of the Qing dynasty, and ruled a swathe of China centred on Nanking (now Nanjing). Between 20 million and 70 million people died in the Taiping Rebellion, the carnage of which has been compared to that of the first world war.

Ma Xinyi, the main protagonist in The Warlords (he has been renamed Pang for the film), was the military genius who helped end the rebellion by capturing the rebel headquarters, Nanking.

He was assassinated by Zhang Wenxiang in 1870, perhaps because of his effectiveness in cracking down on pirates, or a personal grievance, or a dispute over a woman. After seven months of interrogation, the Qing authorities could not find out Zhang’s reasons for killing Ma, and condemned him to death by slow dismemberment.

Like Chang’s film, The Warlords focuses on the idea that the reason for the assassination was that Ma had an illicit affair with the wife of an associate. The story begins when General Pang (Li), whose army has been decimated by the rebels, joins a bandit group led by Zhao (Lau) and Jiang (Kaneshiro). The three become sworn blood brothers. With the help of his brothers, Pang rejoins the Qing army and vanquishes the rebels, while quietly having an affair with Zhao’s wife Lian (Xu Jinglei).

Zhao disagrees with the tactics Pang uses to hold Nanjing after his army’s crowning victory – he kills all the prisoners – and Pang, who wants Lian for his own, uses the disagreement as a reason to order Zhao’s death. To keep the sworn brotherhood intact, Jiang kills Lian – a major departure from Chang Cheh’s version – but tragedy ensues for all.

“The movie is really different from Blood Brothers, not only in terms of the actual film, but also in terms of the real people it is based on,” Chan told Movieexclusive.com. “We decided that we would change the names of the [real] characters, as they are only loosely based on them. The story is completely made up.”

Chan has said that he had avoided making large-scale action films because he prefers a small crew. The Warlords, by contrast, employed a crew of around 1,400.

Chan hired Ching Siu-tung, one of Hong Kong’s top martial arts choreographers, but admits in a documentary about the film that his lack of experience of making such films led to problems between them, and those were exacerbated by a gruelling 117-day shoot in China in extremely cold weather.

Working with the action choreographer became more difficult because Chan did not want the fight scenes to look anything like a wuxia film from the past – indeed, the documentary shows how he tried hard to ensure the fight scenes did not look too “Chang Cheh”.

“I told him [Ching] to go against everything that he’s good at for this film. To try out things that he usually avoids. So it took a while for us to decide how the battle scenes should be,” he recalled.

Chan did not have the action-film vocabulary to effectively communicate how he wanted the scenes to look, and Ching became frustrated as a result. Jet Li diplomatically stepped in to clarify the ideas Chan was trying to express to Ching.

“It’s very difficult to control the action if you have an action choreographer,” Chan said. “The action people have completely different priorities.

“They mainly care about what looks good. But I am a storyteller, and it’s not only about what looks good on the screen – you have to move the audience. It needs to be more than action, and it’s really difficult to get that balance. We finally did, but not without a lot of difficult times.”

In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here.

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