Willem Dafoe is entertainingly cast as a guy who’s been held by the Wall garrison for 25 years during which time he conveniently taught Commander Lin the rather good English she’ll need for slightly stiff philosophical discussions with William about whether they’re similar in their approaches to life or not. Pascal adds a touch of sidekick humor, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. He has seen a great deal in his peripatetic adventures but is sincerely impressed by the advanced culture holding him prisoner. The premise is a solid enough framework - connoisseurs of manga and anime might say derivative - on which to hang impressive FX, be they rampaging critters or the occasional lovely interlude such as white lanterns dispersed in the sky.ĭamon’s William is pleasantly rugged, confident in the skills he already possesses and adaptable to learning new ones. The ante gets upped until a final battle replete with selfless sacrifice, acrobatic teamwork, cross-cultural bravery and stuff that blows up.
A battle sequence is never far away and motivations remain credible within the parameters of popcorn-movie silliness, played straight. Viewers are in good hands - if they’re not too demanding - as Zhang Yimou puts the easily distinguishable characters through their paces. The Taotie are ravenous predators who take orders from a Queen whose method of communicating is subtly thrilling as movie monsters loosely inspired by genuine legends go. The claw came from a Taotie, a living analogy for human greed that attacks every 60 years and gets smarter between assaults. William and Tovar assume they’ll be executed but are able to prove to General Shao (Hanyu Zhang) who commands 100,000 soldiers, Strategist Wang (Andy Lau Tak-wah) and Commander Lin (Jing Tian) of the so-called Nameless Order that they’re handy to have around in a fight. Riding away from tribal enemies the next day only to hit a major obstacle, William and Tovar are obliged to surrender to the resplendent folks atop a fortified wall. In camp by night he slays something that bleeds green and leaves only its sinister severed claw behind before conveniently plunging into an abyss. William decides to keep a hunk of magnetic stone even though it’s heavy and he’s on horseback.
With money and food his lone motivations, William has fought far and wide, including in Spain where he presumably linked forces with his closest brother-in-arms Tovar (Chile-born actor Pedro Pascal).Įxpedient strokes establish several essential components of the story. It’s never established where, exactly, he’s from, but a few syllables that could be a vague medieval Irish accent surface at times. The Great Wall took 1,700 years to build the film seems likely to turn a profit on a reported $150 million budget a good deal faster than that.Ī peerless archer, William (Damon) is among the last of a band of men who set out to find gunpowder in the Far East. Viewers are in good hands - if they’re not too demanding - as Zhang Yimou puts the easily distinguishable characters through their paces.Īlready attracting viewers in Asia since its Dec 16 release - although not in sufficiently dazzling numbers for some observers - the U.S.-China co-production has just topped the box office in the Middle East and opens in France on Jan 11 and in the US and UK on Feb 17. There’s rarely a dull moment in this ambitious spectacle about a 12th century European mercenary in search of the fabled explosive “black powder that turns air into fire.” Arriving just in time for a long-dreaded siege, our protagonist - played by Matt Damon - ends up learning that trust is good, the Chinese invented tactical bungee jumping and women can be peerless military tacticians. West meets East to entertaining effect in Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall, which posits that fortuitous foreigners can be a big help and that China’s ancient Great Wall was really erected to keep excellent special effects critters with sharp teeth and nasty dispositions from reaching the nation’s capital.
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