Reviewed by: Beat TG Date: 03/09/2025 Summary: New Take on Guan Yu that Satisfies The movie underperformed at the local box-office at the time of its' initial release. The main factor for its' "failure" was Donnie Yen -- standing at 5' 8" -- portraying a real-life soldier and war general that was bigger and supposedly much taller (more than 6'). But since there's no proof of Guan Yu's height and size, there's only alot you can do to imagine the historical figure's appearance that would come close to the facts. Directing duo Alan Mak and Felix Chong does something that no other filmmaker would dare doing: Doing their own interpretation of Guan Yu without any myths surrounding his worship-like and over-the-top/exaggerated status, and sticking to the roots as realistically as possible. For that, I think they did a great job creating a totally humanizing version of Guan Yu and Donnie Yen making the character relatable to pretty much anyone situated on historical and modern battlefields. Donnie himself gets to showcase his acting skills once again, and his performance deserves applauds for not going his own route of method acting but actually immersing himself into the character without flaws apart from the dialogue being dubbed in Mandarin, which affects his overall acting (Donnie's a native Cantonese speaker) a bit. However, Jiang Wen as Cao Cao is the movie's true standout with his strong charisma and very impressive acting. Moving on to the action scenes... It's freaking great! Truly inspirational and undoubtedly the best fight scenes of its' type (Chinese weaponry in warring scenarios) in a very long time. Donnie has said many times that he's setting a goal to break new grounds in action choreography for each production and this is what he's providing us with here as well: Originality and lots of guts breaking away from conventions. Donnie continues to learn new tricks and improving as an action director, and this movie shows it despite being released over 10 years ago. Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: STSH Date: 08/18/2014 Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: evirei Date: 11/14/2011 Summary: LOST is definately the keyword This movie nailed everything that I hate about Donnie Yen movie. Firstly, it's got Donnie Yen face and name written all over the entire movie. Secondly, the person who casted all the actors should be fired. Which yseriously make me doubt if they ever read the Three Kingdom history before even casting. I mean, seriously... you really think Donnie Yen is Guan Yuan Chang material? Alex Fong and Wen Jiang each fit for their cast as Liu bei and Cao Cao? Oh, to add to the hatred list, the Cantonese dubbed version is horrible. It makes Cao Cao sounded so gentle and sissy. Come on people... this is saddening. Thirdly, the storline is just so screwed up. I mean, we all pay to watch a movie, which of course we are expecting to see movies being acted out to the end, not acting some shots which doesn't make any sense to connect the start and the ending. To add to the worst after taste, they wrote the ending out, which I could just buy a book to finish it off. Storyline is lose and choppy. Not to mentioned... it didn't really explain how the head was chopped in the first place. Fourthly, it's suppose to tell the tale of Guan Yun Chang, but it's more like a Romeo and Juliet movie. And what's worst is they completely turned the movie in to a romantic epic movie. Now that's sad! The only thing that is worth mentioning would probably be the action sequence. And yes, one would definately be as lost as the title of the movie is, should they make it out of the cinema alive. Reviewer Score: 2

Reviewed by: dandan Date: 05/05/2011 Summary: it is not enough to simply live, one must live well... it is the latter days of the han dynasty. the warring states period. cao cao (jiang wen) is the head of emperor xian's (wang bo-chieh) court; essentially he is wielding power as the young emperor enjoys his protection. amongst other enemy generals in his capture, cao cao has guan yu (donnie yen); a man with no small reputation, who is as fierce a fighter as he is loyal to his sworn brother liu bei (alex fong).now, liu bei is an enemy of cao cao but, such is personality of guan yu, he agrees to fight for cao cao, in order to bring to an end, the bloody fighting that is going on around him, thanks to an attack from the warlord dong cheng (?). and so begins cao cao's pursuit of guan yu, whom he would love to have as a loyal tool at his disposal. however, guan yu is a man of principle, who doesn't trust the political manoeuvrings of cao cao and just wants to get back to the side of liu bei, taking qi lan (betty sun), liu bei's latest wife, with him. cao cao and his generals are not going to make this an easy task... so, having not read any promotion for this, but just having seen the posters as i arrived in hong kong a couple of weeks back, i thought that jiang wen and donnie yen in a bit of a historical epic would be a good watch, especially for the acting talents of the former and the martial arts talents of the latter. i was right. although, it wasn't until about halfway through the film that i suddenly realised 'oh, it's that general guan'. i can be quite slow sometimes... so, yes, it's tale of guan yu crossing five passes, from luo guanzhong's novel 'romance of the three kingdoms' and, from what i read, some people seem to be giving poor donnie a hard time about his portrayal of general guan. well, apart from a little too much beard stroking and the fact that he doesn't really look like any depiction of guan yu that i'm familiar with, i thought he did a pretty good job. donnie has never been someone with a great range of acting ability and, even though he has always had physical presence and undeniable ability when it comes to screen fighting, he has never simply relied on this and he really does seem to have made an effort to better his acting over the years and this probably marks another step up the ladder for him. this is a good thing, especially as he's opposite jiang wen for a lot of the film, who most people would agree is probably one of the best talents working in china today. it should go without saying that jiang wen is brilliant as cao cao, which is a very good role for someone of his talents. the rest of the cast should be complimented too, but i shall single out wang zuebing for bringing an extra little something to the small role of wang zhi. alex man and felix chong do well to take what is a rather large story and work it into a well paced couple of hours, where the drama and scale of the world the story is taking place in, never overshadows the drama of the characters and the flow from battles and confrontations, to some quite lengthy scenes of one to one dialogue is handled very well. what also helps is that the film is almost always quite beautiful to look at, with a really nice look and feel to the cinematography, lighting, production and costume design. oh, and there's also some action... in fact, there's rather a lot of action... and, it's rather bloody good. from a large scale battle, one on ones, donnie taking on all comers, a stunning battle with andy on, a fight with very low lighting, which still manages to come across well and more; there's some very watchable, very well executed going on and, even if he doesn't look like general guan, donnies levels of ass-kickery are pretty sodding brilliant. i really enjoyed this.

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