Wu, Wei, Shu, who will be victorious??? (Three Kingdoms - Resurrection Of The Dragon (DVD))

Member Name: Leonbriggsy

Product:	Three Kingdoms - Resurrection Of The Dragon (DVD)
Date:	19/09/09 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great film, stunning battle sequences,

Disadvantages: the stories are a little warped from what we all know before

'Three kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon' centres around the fabled part of chinese history that many of us have come to adore.

The premise of this film is of the three kingdoms era, the empires of Wu, Wei and Shu all fighting to unify china under one rule.

Resurrection of the dragon follows the great hero Zhao Zilong (who is more commonly known in literature as Zhao Yun) as he first joins the forces of Liu Bei under the Shu dynasty.

Andy Lau does a great job in playing this character and we are able to see the changes in him as he ages; the film although only around 90 minutes long tries to span his life in the armies of Shu but only really concentrates on his first encounter with Liu Bei and his final stand at Phoenix Heights.

The co-star in this film is Sammo Hung who plays Luo Ping-an, a fictitious character who people may not recognise as he is not mentioned in either 'the Romance of the of the Three Kingdoms' (the historical based novel) or in any other historical text.

Finally we have Maggie Q who also plays a fictitious character, Cao Ying, Cao Cao's grand daughter of the Wei Dynasty.

It is great to see characters in the film such as Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and others but this film really does not hold true to the stories of the romance of the three kingdoms.
The whole story is a little warped as there were many things which were different, for example Cao Cao had no grand daughter named Cao Ying and in the final battle of the Northern Expeditions at Hanzhong province, the armies of Wei were lead by Cao Zhen, a distant nephew of Cao Cao.

Despite all this we could be led to believe that this was the real depiction of events as of course the romance of the three kingdoms is only a novel based on history.

Despite all this I found this film amazing to watch with stunning battle sequences and a real unexpected 'knife in the back twist' at the end.

In warping the original story 'the resurrection of the dragon' has been able to create a new story, which while holding true to some familiar events, it creates new circumstances and events giving a fresh scenario to the stories of the three kingdoms era.

Obviously it's in subtitles and the film may not be to some peoples liking but if you have any admiration for the era of the three kingdoms you will absolutely love this film.

Summary: this is good but Red Cliff is ten times better!!!