The Lost Bladesman (Guan yun chang) (2011)
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Reviews Counted: 7
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
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Movie Info
A tyrant forces the greatest warrior in the land to battle his greatest friend by holding the woman they both love hostage.
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All Critics (9) | Top Critics (2) | Fresh (4) | Rotten (3)
An epic historical martial arts film with thin characters, a tepid love story and some excellent fight sequences with the long-handled crescent-moon blade.
There's something really robust about actually seeing a fight rather than the cutaways and the illusion of a fight rather than a real fight.
The Lost Bladesman starts off big and rather cool and ends up an intimate epic hot and heavy with spent passions and an aura of sadness that's unexpectedly moving.
After a while it all becomes a bit predictable, especially as the political motivations are, to the uninitiated, more than slightly opaque.
Problems of scale limit the film's clarity and its emotional power.
While the action is impressive, the human drama and characterisation of the potentially fascinating warrior General Guan Yu is sadly one-dimensional.
I found the storytelling a little confusing, mostly due to the plethora of characters who are mentioned in the context of the wars that are taking place or about to. But aside from that, the film works as a well made genre piece
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Foreign Titles
- The Lost Bladesman (DE)
- The Lost Bladesman (UK)
Current martial arts heavyweight Yen weilds Guan's famed guan dao blade to slay legions also admirably flexing his best stoic acting muscles.
Despite its aspirations (and predictably impressive fights), The Lost Bladesman never reaches the heights of Red Cliff or Hero, lacking the scale of the former and the emotional resonance of the latter.