Three Kingdoms (2008)

His country torn asunder by civil war, Zhao Zilong, a common man heeds the call of duty and from the humblest of roots rises through the ranks on wings of courage and cunning to command an ... See full summary »

Director:

Daniel Lee

Writers:

Ho Leung Lau, Daniel Lee

Stars:

Andy Lau, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, Maggie Q

2 wins & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Andy Lau	...	Zhao Zilong
Sammo Kam-Bo Hung	...	Luo Ping-An
Maggie Q	...	Cao Ying
Cunxin Pu	...	Zhuge Liang
Andy On	...	Deng Zhi
Rongguang Yu	...	Han De
Hua Yueh	...	Liu Bei
Lung Ti	...	Guan Yu
Zhi-Hui Chen	...	Zhang Fei
Vanness Wu	...	Guan Xing
Damian Lau	...	Cao Cao
Haifeng Ding	...	Zhang Bao
Hongbo Jiang	...	Ruan
Hongtao Wang	...	Huang Zhong
Menghe Wu Liji	...	Ma Chao

Storyline

His country torn asunder by civil war, Zhao Zilong, a common man heeds the call of duty and from the humblest of roots rises through the ranks on wings of courage and cunning to command an army charged with liberating the land from an evil warlord. Inspiring by action, honor and a dream of unifying his divided nation, Zhao Zilong's heroism becomes legend, but as the years pass and the throne changes hands the war still rages on. When a newly enthroned king decides peace can only be achieved by defeating the warlords once and for all, the aging Zhao Zilong embarks on his final and greatest campaign, a road to adventure that will crown his name in glory for all time.

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Plot Keywords:

3rd century | ancient china | military leader | civil war | china | 

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Genres:

Action | Drama | History | War

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for bloody battle sequences

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Japan]

Country:

China South Korea Hong Kong

Language:

Mandarin

Release Date:

3 April 2008 (China)

Also Known As:

Three Kingdoms

Filming Locations:

China

Box Office

Budget:

$25,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Visualizer Film Productions, Taewon Entertainment, China Film Group Corporation (CFGC)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

102 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Alternate Versions

The UK version is cut by 3 secs to remove shots of cruel horsefalls.

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Connections

Version of Zuo ci xi cao cao (1931)

User Reviews

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.