An Empress and the Warriors

An Empress and the Warriors

Starring: Kelly Chen, Leon Lai, Donnie Yen, Guo Xiaodong

Directed by: Tony Siu-Tung Ching

Reviewed by: Conor Flynn







• ‘Making of’ documentary
• Trailers

The Wuxia genre, which encompasses martial arts with near soap-opera dramatics, has been around since the earliest days of cinema, hitting a slight nadir during the mid eighties, only to find a colossal resurgence with the hugely popular ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’. Since then we’ve had a slew of similar films; some superb, though most are wildly melodramatic. ‘An Empress and the Warriors’ is the latest in a very long line of Wuxia genre films, but does it have anything new to offer?

Yan Feier (Chen) is the only heir to the Kingdom of Yan. With the death of her father, Yan inherits the throne, though she is unprepared for the duty. Meanwhile, her cousin, Wu Ba (Xiaodong), plots her murder after his failure to inherit the thrown for himself. With help of a reclusive warrior, Duan Lanquan (Leon Lai), Yan escapes an assassination attempt. A romance quickly bosoms, however, Yan must choose between her love for Duan Lanquan and her responsibility to the kingdom…

An Empress and the Warriors is very much a join the dots effort, thanks mostly to its weak script. It is straight forward to say the least and pilfers in any direction it can, most notably from films such as ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Titanic’, but isn’t anywhere near as good as either. The plot is similar to the former, but is extremely basic. Anybody looking for deep political and palace intrigue should look elsewhere. As for the latter, an entire musical cue seems to have been stolen wholesale to up the romance of the film. This is very detrimental as it only highlights the weak dialogue which sounds as if it was written by a twelve year old girl.

The romance is unadulterated cornball stuff, which is fine by this reviewer, but will test the patience of anyone waiting for the inevitable battle sequences. When they eventually arrive, they are largely disappointing; lacking scope but still managing to go way over the top. The film is tightly edited to ninety minutes which leaves little or no time for subtlety; everything is rushed into far too quickly. All that said; it still manages to entertain in an extremely silly way. The DVD itself is average. The picture quality is soft and slightly washed out. The sound is clear in 2.0 and 5.1 but doesn’t really test your system. A ‘making of’ documentary highlights the exquisite technical aspects of the film in amongst the usual cast and crew back slapping moments. The only other extra included are a number of trailers. Other extras were promised in the press release; however they seem to be absent.

An Empress and the Warriors is very uneven and highly unoriginal. Despite its numerous flaws, it has a certain kitsch value which is always fun.