"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers – all epic films, simply stunning in their beauty, cinematography and emotion.  These films rocked the Hollywood establishment by bringing foreign subtitled cinema firmly into the ac"

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers – all epic films, simply stunning in their beauty, cinematography and emotion.  These films rocked the Hollywood establishment by bringing foreign subtitled cinema firmly into the accepted mainstream. 

Three Kingdoms follows in the path laid by the aforementioned epics.  Based on one of the biggest Chinese novels of all time, “Romance of The Three Kingdoms”, Three Kingdoms follows the path of Zhao Zilong as he fights in the Shu army, seeking to unite the fractious nation of China.

In doing so, I worry that Three Kingdoms tries to do too much.  The book it is based on spans decades, huge battles, and the rise and fall of nations.  As a result, it’s very difficult to engage with the characters, and despite not being overly long, the film stops and starts and feels rather disjointed - lacking in the emotion that is so often found in this genre.

Where previous Chinese epics have been breathtaking in their cinematography, this is another area where Three Kingdoms falls down.  Whether due to having a smaller budget (this is a straight to DVD release), or simply different production values, it lacks the visual ‘wow’ factor of previous films, and the ‘blurred’ cinematography during some of the battle scenes made me feel a bit dizzy!  That said, as expected, the martial arts on display were simply stunning – how there are so many of these phenomenal talents in China is beyond me. 

What will be interesting is how John Woo’s epic Red Cliff, which focuses on one of the battles encompassed in Three Kingdoms, stacks up in comparison.  With a bigger budget, bigger stars, and a smaller time frame to focus on, it threatens to put Three Kingdoms to shame.