Tony Ching’s An Empress And The Warriors promises so much but delivers little. While its art direction looks great, it suffers from a weak story with improbable moments and forced emotions. Maybe we’ve been spoilt lately by so many lavish period costume dramas/war epics. But with each period epic that comes along, expectation goes a notch higher naturally. Peter Chan’s The Warlords was a very watchable affair. An Empress seems to throw every idea out there into the mix, so we have the ambitious kin of the king, the unwilling heroine, the loyal leading warrior, the forest dweller with a heart of gold, and every other thing that we’ve seen in every other movie.
The story takes place during the time of the Warring States, when the kingdom of Yan is defending itself against an invasion by the Zhao. Kelly Chen plays the Yan king’s daughter, Yan Feier, who is forced to take on the role of monarch when her father dies suddenly. Although her father had bestowed the honour of leading the Yan kingdom on the fierce General Muyong (Donnie Yen), she hesitantly accepts the role to avoid a civil war, because two factions have appeared in the military ranks, one led by the loyal General Muyong and the other by the king’s murderously ambitious nephew, Wu Ba (Guo Xiaodong).
Wu Ba tries to kill Feier before her coronation, but she escapes injured into the forest and is rescued by mysterious stranger Duan Lanquan (Leon Lai), who lives alone in the forest, in what looks like an Ewok village (serious!). The two eventually fall in love but when trouble breaks out in the Yan kingdom, Feier is forced to return home.
The film begins at a breathless pace, rushing from one moment to another. It only starts to take a breather when the romance begins, and it’s a cheesy one that somehow put into my head the image of Titanic in a hot-air balloon (I won’t explain, but wait till you see it). Although the film tries to imbue political and court intrigue into the proceedings, with notes on war and peace and women’s rights, it’s a simplistic A-to-B-to-C kind of story that’s almost child-like in its naivete. The simplicity sometimes recalls early Shaw Brothers period films, but the homage falls short when everything else is up to the times, especially the violence and action.
And as for action, if you go into this expecting Donnie Yen to kick some serious ass, you’d be disappointed. The big action finale looks like Jay Chou’s one-man berserk rampage in Curse Of The Golden Flower, and apart from that, Yen doesn’t get to show off many graceful, concussion-inducing moves. And whatever action sequences there are seem unexciting, surprising when you consider that it’s Tony Ching in the director’s chair.
An Empress And The Warriors doesn’t get the adrenaline pumping, is sometimes unintentionally silly, and could do with very much less maudlin romance with cheesy love song thrown in. And it doesn’t help that Kelly Chen looks completely out of place in a period drama, let alone her trying to play a strong warrior princess.
