What is it about? -- This US$16 million epic production is a China-Korea-Japan collaboration and supposedly took the director 11 years to prepare and make. Based on a 90s' Japanese manga, it portrays how one lone man, Ge Li (Andy Lau), a Mo Tzu disciple, rallies the townspeople of the (small) city of Liang to defend themselves against the overwhelming might of the Zhao army, who coincidentally, are just passing through to invade another kingdom. Its literally a battle of wits (hence the title) between Ge Li and the Zhao general and they try to outwit each other with their war strategies for the entire duration of this film!Who's in it? -- As is obvious from the film posters, this is basically a one-man show by Andy Lau but his supporting cast consists of some reliable actors from China and Korea.
You should watch it if you're --
1. A fan of big-budget, epic, Chinese films.
2. A fan of war-movies. Per se.
3. down to your last ten bucks for the weekend, secretly loves seeing people getting dismembered and cannot tahan films that consist of animated talking animals. ;p
You should NOT watch it if you're --
1. thinking this will be another Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, The Banquet, etc. There are no flying swordsmen in this film!
2. not Chinese, don't understand Mandarin and don't like to read subtitles.
3. a girl and war-films just bore you to death! (unless u're a die-hard Andy Lau fan lah..)
In a nutshell -- Battle Of Wits reminded me of those times (long,long ago!) when I used to play Romance of the Three Kingdoms on my old Sega gaming console. Frankly speaking, the CGI effects are not impressive, there are no lush scenes of beautiful countryside to distract you, and there isn't much of a storyline. On top of that, the romantic subplot involving Ge Li and a calvary officer (played by the beautiful but unconvincing Fan BingBing) is too superficial to be credible. Notwithstanding these flaws, I was still captivated by the battle scenes and the depicted "strategies" were quite engaging in their execution, so much so that I quite lost track of the time!
my ratings -- 3.3/5 Stars!!!
