'THE GREAT WALL' is the first English language film of acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou and is the first film of Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon in China. A period action fantasy about Chinese warriors trying to stop entire armies of monsters from invading China, Matt, along with Willem Dafoe, certainly lend some pedigree to this international production that also stars respected Chinese actors like Andy Lau and Zhang Hanyu.
The film begins with captions saying that there are both facts and legends surrounding the Great Wall. The movie is "one of the legends", making an outright disclaimer to any objections that will be made by detractors concerning the film's fantastic premise.
The film opens like a western at the Gobi Desert, with Matt playing a mercenary, William, who is being chased by some tribes in Northern China, along with another mercenary, Tovar (Pedro Pascal, who plays Oberyn Martell in "Game of Thrones"). When they are captured by the soldiers of a military outpost at the Great Wall, they claim to be traveling traders. The truth is Matt wants to get the formula in producing gunpowder that can make him rich abroad.
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Soon Matt and Pascal witness a big battle when the monsters attack again, which is spectacularly staged through Industrial Light and Magic magnificent special effects. They're definitely a better version of similar scenes we've seen before in the Japanese manga turned movie, "Attack on Titan".
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What the movie offers is a lot of spectacle, like the female soldiers who do bungee jumping down the
Great Wall to slay the marauding beasts. Another gripping sequence shows Matt helping the Chinese soldiers capture a beast alive, with everything clouded in the mist and fog. The finale is staged with hordes of Tao Tie creatures laying siege to two big pagodas. The whole thing looks more like a zombie apocalypse in "World War Z", but with a distinctly Chinese backdrop. The way the beasts themselves are designed is quite impressive, especially their queen, who has to be destroyed to subdue them all.
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Made with a reported budget of $150 million, the spectacular battle scenes will make you recall those of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. It's been released in Asia earlier as it will open in the U.S. in mid-February yet. It has to do really well both at the Chinese and American box office to recoup its huge investment.
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