Until present day, I would still play back the movie and rewatch it again and again. It just has this melancholic vibe in it, a mix of beauty and tragedy. Tragedy probably because I know from the start, it is a mission destined to fail, because it is a story based on Jing Ke's (荆轲) assassination attempt on Qing Shi Wang (秦始皇).
Starring Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi, Donnie Yen, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, the casting is so great for the movie that even one doesn't understand the movie still can enjoy the hell out of it simply by its awesome action scenes. My favorite is the fight between Jet Li and Donnie Yen at the Go chess club and also the fight between Jet Li and Tony Leung on the lake which is all in thousand nuances of blue.
What I like the most about the movie isn't the action sequence but the reason why the protagonist Wu Ming doesn't kill Qing Shi Wang even when he has the perfect shot to do it. Wu Ming sees the bigger picture, puts his mission of revenge for his people behind and lets Qing Shi Wang live. Being in the era of Warring States (战国时代), he realized if he kills Qing Shi Wang now, there will soon be another kingdom, another king like Qing Shi Wang stomping the other kingdoms and never-ending war continues. What Wu Ming really wants is peace and the only way to end the war sooner is to let the strongest of the kingdoms win the war and conquer the other kingdoms. Qing Shi Wang is the only one with such power to do so and thus end the war definitely.
So Wu Ming lets him live. He then walks out the door, turned around to face millions arrows heading towards him. This is probably one the most epic ending to ever put on the big screen, so epic that Leonidas' death in 300 copied this scene. It gives me goosebumps everytime I watch it. It is the feeling of a man, standing straight in front of the inevitable, of the insurmountable : a man against millions, a man against death, a man against history.
If you think the Chinese wuxia (武侠) movies are so unrealistic, I can't blame you because I used to think so too eventhough I kinda love people flying around. But for one quote that I can't remember from whom, I start to embrace these movies and books that Chinese normally categorized as wuxia and even proud of the fact that I love these unrealistic fighting sequences. The quote is basically saying that growing up in Eastern culture, wuxia novels and comics are in fact the equivalent of superhero comics in Western culture. We don't have Superman or Batman or Spiderman, but we, in the Eastern culture have Zhang Wuji (张无忌), Yang Guo (杨过), Nip Fung (聂风) and Bou Ging Wan (步惊云). We don't have Stan Lee but we have Jin Yong (金庸). And in this movie, Wu Ming is my superhero.
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