Tau ming chong (2007)

Directors:

Peter Chan
Wai Man Yip (co-director)

Writers:

Tin Nam Chun (screenplay)
Junli Guo (screenplay)

Release Date:

12 December 2007 (China)

Genre:

Action | Drama | History | War

Plot:

It's a heroic tale of three blood brothers and their struggle in the midst of war and political upheaval...

Plot Keywords:

Blood Brother | General | Dynasty | Assassination | Revenge

Awards:

15 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Jet Li	...	General Pang Qingyun (as Lianjie Li)
Andy Lau	...	Zhao Er-Hu (as Dehua Liu)
Takeshi Kaneshiro	...	Zhang Wen-Xiang (as Wu Jincheng)
Jinglei Xu	...	Lian
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bao-ming Gu
Xiaodong Guo
Zhaoqi Shi	...	He Kui
Dong Dong Wang	...	Zhang Shan
Kuirong Wang	...	Jiang Da Ren
Yachao Wang	...	Young soldier
Zongwan Wei	...	Cheng Da Ren
Bo Zhou

Also Known As:

Ci ma (Hong Kong: Cantonese title) (working title)
The Warlords (International: English title)
Tou ming zhuang (China: Mandarin title)
Warlords (USA) (new title)

MPAA:

Rated R for sequences of strong violence.

Runtime:

126 min | 110 min (international version)

Country:

China | Hong Kong

Language:

Mandarin

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Singapore:NC-16 | Hong Kong:IIB | Malaysia:U | South Korea:18 | Philippines:R-13 (MTRCB) | UK:15 (cut) | Ireland:15A | Germany:16 | Japan:PG-12 | Portugal:M/16 | Australia:MA (2009) | Netherlands:16 | USA:R (certificate #45669)

Filming Locations:

Beijing, China

Company:

Applause Pictures

Trivia:

The main character's name was supposed to be that of an actual historical figure called Ma Xinyi, but was changed to Pang Qingyun in order not to reflect badly on the estate of Ma's descendants, who believe that their ancestor was a good man.

Movie Connections:

References Paths of Glory (1957)

Peter Chan's anti-war effort & a tweak with the HK gangster genre

I'm not a fan of Peter Chan's films... didn't like COMRADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY (1996), thought HE'S A WOMAN, SHE'S A MAN (1994) was OK, but not spectacular. His films are often injected with a little too much calculated sentimentality to me. Yet after watching WARLORDS (2007), I must say this is the first film that made me feel the calculations worked. Peter Chan learned from the mistakes of Zhang Yimou with HERO (2002), HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, and that lame piece of crap CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (2006), he learned that big production and art direction doesn't mean the audience won't expect a good story and direction to go with a film, he also learned that Andrew Lau's triad-gangster-cop INFERNAL AFFAIRS formula can get old if you keep heading toward a beaten path... furthermore, any film that glorifies gangster camaraderie almost means doom with the Chinese film board.

What Peter Chan did was very clever, he actually found a story that allows Andy Lau's affected style of acting to fit the context of a story - WAR. Lau's acting never convinced me in contemporary story lines, but it worked with WARLORDS. In fact, he used all three of the male leads to their type-casted best - Jet Li reprises the hero who sees the greater good but has to accept the fact - that nothing comes without a price, while Takeshi assumes, again, the role of a passive and reluctant hero caught in a crossfire. All the special effects come from the same software you see in big budget films whether it is South Korea, Hollywood, Europe, or Japan, and production value is nothing less than any of the pretty-but-empty period-pieces Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige tried to fool audiences with... I can see the homage/inspiration from Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW, the original GET CARTER,... there were even moments where I thought I was watching a tribute to John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW or THE KILLER -- WARLORDS (2007) is Peter Chan's best film to date, and while there is plenty of sentimentality in the key scenes, the context and the flow of the story actually lifted it from what could have been melodrama, to quite compelling performances.

Whatever calculations and formulas Peter Chan used on his previous films that I didn't like, the math worked for WARLORDS (2007)... and what results is some of the best performances I've seen from Jet Li that doesn't start and end with just fight scenes...

What I'm amazed with is how a Chinese period film is also one of the better anti-war movies I've seen in a long while.