Saam gwok dzi gin lung se gap (2008)

Director:

Daniel Lee

Writers:

Ho Leung Lau (writer)
Daniel Lee (writer)

Release Date:

3 April 2008 (China)

Genre:

Action | Drama | History | War

Plot:

His country torn asunder by civil war, Zhao, a common man heeds the call of duty and from the humblest...

Plot Keywords:

China | Commander | Chinese | Female Warrior | Musician

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Andy Lau	...	Zhao Zilong
Sammo Hung Kam-Bo	...	Luo Ping-An
Maggie Q	...	Cao Ying
Vanness Wu	...	Zhao Bao
Andy On	...	Deng Zhi
Rongguang Yu	...	Han De
Quanxin Pu	...	Zhuge Liang
Lung Ti	...	Guan Yu
Hua Yueh	...	Liu Bei
Chen Zhi Hui	...	Zhang Fei
Damian Lau	...	Cao Cao
Timmy Hung	...	Han De's son

Also Known As:

San guo zhi xian long xie jia (China: Mandarin title)
Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (International: English title)

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

China | South Korea | Hong Kong

Language:

Mandarin

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

South Korea:15 | Hong Kong:IIB | Singapore:NC-16 | Japan:PG-12

Filming Locations:

China

Company:

Visualizer Film Productions

Movie Connections:

Version of Diao Chan (1938)

A Brief Comment; a near waste...

It seems as though it is only a half finished project. A first time joint venture- a major motion picture project put together by the Chinese and the Korean production teams, the Chinese took part in pre-production; from writing up the screen play to directing (a Chinese guy who made Jet Li's "Black Mask), acting & filming while the Korean team took care of most of the post production (& funding), the CGI, and scoring.

With almost unlimited amount of funding and the pool of world-class production talents in Asia, I cannot help but wonder how an opportunity like this could have gone this wrong. The famous Chinese classic- the three kingdoms - is an epic war story that one could not find its proper match in its scale in any part of the world. The movie deserved more than only a 90 min. duration. Why Why Why did the director and its team decide to cut out anything that resembled a real drama? Who knows. Jhon Woo wanted to give the project a proper attention, so in his upcoming three kingdoms project,'the red cliff' he is devoting 4 hours to tell the story.

The action sequences, camera works, set designs, costumes, and props, and even the score, you name it, they were all top notch. But Why? Why no Drama? Why could't the director decide to use another 30 more minutes to supplement the sheer absence of story-telling and the sufficient characterization of each of the major characters ? It would only have made the film 120 minutes, which is still within the main stream block buster length range. Besides I bet that anyone who came to see the movie must have expected something more of a... "brave heart" type of epic story and heart wrenching human drama and understood appreciatively even if the movie went more than 2 hours.

What a waste...indeed !!! I am a big fan of Three kingdoms and Any Lau, so i will always love any project that has anything to do with those 2 elements, but this one.... oh... a surprisingly disappointing project, indeed. I gave it a 5 out of ten, because as I mentioned, the picture is only a half-finished and at least that half was pretty good.