A film that made quite a splash in China when it beat John Woo's (far superior) Red Cliff to screens, The Three Kingdoms: Resurrection Of The Dragon is another film in the recent line of epic period war films that the Chinese film industry seems so enamored with lately. Directed by Daniel Lee, it's a film that has some impressive moments but which ultimately fails to deliver the action and spectacle that films like Woo's picture and like Hero used to such advantage.

Set in 228 A.D., the film beings when China is in the midst of a massive civil war. It's here that the film follows a commoner named Zhao Zilong (Andy Lau) who joins the army and very quickly and efficiently makes his way to the top of the command with some help from his friend, Ping-an (Sammo Hung). His courage and bravery is an inspiration to the troops he works with and soon enough they're well on their way to freeing the land from the grip of a tyrannical warlord.

Zhao has bigger aspirations, however. He also wants to bring the divided country together and so he sets about trying to make that happen. The war, however, is still being waged and different power cycles prove unable to stop it. Zhao remains determined, however, and so he sets out to wage one last battle in an attempt to stop the warlords from harming the country he loves any further, but the granddaughter of one of the toughest warlords, Cao Ying (Maggie Q), won't let things go without a fight.

Three Kingdoms: The Resurrection Of The Dragon has a great cast but fails to really give them all that much to do. While it's amusing to see Andy Lau carving his way across the battle field at first, complete with copious amounts of CGI rendered arterial spray, it starts to get old very quickly. On top of that, the various battle scenes that should serve as the centerpieces of the picture fall flat, as much of the action is shot close in which constricts things a great deal. If you're going to show us a massive, sprawling epic battle, then give it to us with some style and with as broad a scope as you can. Lee doesn't go that route, he tightens things up too much and this takes away from what should feel monstrous and instead feels more like a gang war.

On top of all that, by the time the ending rolls around, it doesn't feel like the film has amounted to much. While it gets bonus points for at least trying to remain historically accurate, the film doesn't really succeed at giving us an emotional connection to the characters. The script tries in spots, and the main cast members give it a good shot, but it all winds up feeling forced and corny like something out of a hammy daytime soap opera. The film takes an anti-war stance by not bothering to explain the reasoning behind it, but doesn't offer anything up in its place aside from the suggestion that it's inevitable and simply a crappy part of life for those involved in it.

The film does benefit from some great production values and beautiful cinematography. The costumes and wardrobe work on display is always pretty to look at. Andy Lau and Sammo Hung aren't given enough to do, however. They look cool, they can both act, they're both very apt in handling action scenes and they've both got a solid screen presence but the movie doesn't exploit that. Hung is more or less in the background most of the time, while Lau is asked to look distressed a lot. The film does give Maggie Q's character some nice scenes, but her lack of martial arts training is compensated by some wirework and computer enhancement which renders it all fairly uninteresting.

The few moments where Three Kingdoms: The Resurrection Of The Dragon works well aren't really enough to help us overlook the fact that much of the film is not only bloated, but corny and overdone.

Video:

Lionsgate presents Three Kingdoms: Resurrection Of The Dragon in a rather unexciting 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio. Sure, the image is perfectly watchable but the colors are not all that well defined and detail tends to waver a fair bit. The abundance of CGI makes a few scenes look pretty soft and some edge enhancement is noticeable here and there. There aren't any compression artifacts or print damage problems of note, but the encoding isn't exactly impressive and things just look a bit drab.