Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
(Universal Pictures/Legendary Pictures)
By Lucas Allen
Known for his period-piece, martial arts films, director Zhang Yimou creates visually appealing action films with his acclaimed international hits “Hero,” “House of Flying Daggers” and “Curse of the Golden Flower.” For his first English/Chinese co-production, “The Great Wall,” he brings his signature style to a big-time Hollywood production. However, if a foreign-language film starring a big-name American star seems weird to you, you’ll find something surprising about this film.
In ancient China, two European soldiers named William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal) scour the country looking for gunpowder while avoiding bandits. During the night, they get attacked by a mysterious creature they manage to defeat.
The next day, they find themselves at the country’s Great Wall, where a large army called the Nameless Order is housed waiting to battle. It turns out that these monsters known as the Toe-Tei attack the nation every 60 years, and the wall was made to keep them out.
Naturally, the two men’s skills with their weapons was enough to join the army led by General Shao (Hanyu Zhang) and Commander Lin Mae (Tian Jing) to keep these creatures away. Meanwhile, another Westerner, Ballard (Willem Dafoe), has kept some gunpowder and is willing to exchange it for their freedom. But William soon realizes that China is in jeopardy of losing their food and supplies to the Toe-Tei, and he has to make the ultimate choice.
If you’re familiar with Yimou’s films, you’ll enjoy this film for its production values, thanks to the director’s attention to detail. He brings a certain degree of color to each and every scene from the landscapes to the battle armor. His filmmaking approach makes him stand out from other well-known directors around the world.
The concept for the Toe-Tei is particularly interesting, as swarms of alien monsters communicated with telepathically by its queen. Their design is pretty cool with large jaws in the front and eyes perched on both sides of their bodies. Since this is a foreign film, their designs feel more refreshingly original than the stuff we have seen in the past few years.
The screenplay co-written by Max Brooks and Tony Gilroy, however, doesn’t offer the same greatness that Yimou’s earlier movies had. Its quality of character development and dialogue is questionable, spending more time on action than the developing much of the plot and characters. While we still get great action scenes, the audience won’t have time to breathe in between them. A few more drafts and a longer runtime would’ve been helpful.
The acting between Damon and the other actors is fine for the most part, considering the mediocre material they had to work with. In fact, Jason Bourne himself had to perform with a heavy accent and a man-bun to try to be a convincing character. He’s great in his action scenes as usual, but his half-Irish and half-Bostonian accent doesn’t work.
A flawed but fun movie to watch, “The Great Wall” has all the style but little substance to offer. It does have enough good stuff to make it worth watching, but don’t expect anything special. Still, it’s a far better experience than “Gods of Egypt” and “Ben-Hur.”
THE MOVIE’S RATING: PG-13 (for sequences of fantasy action/violence)
THE CRITIC’S RATING: 3 stars (out of four)
