The Warlords

The Warlords presents itself as a solid historical film packed with epic battle scenes. But honestly, something about those fight sequences just felt off. Visually, they were styled well, but there was something missing, and that’s a letdown considering the action was the main reason I wanted to watch. Jet Li may have stepped away from Hollywood, but back home in China, he’s clearly still going strong. (06.11.2011)

A picture of two completely different parts, both of which are well-made, but don’t fit together in any way at all. Apart perhaps from the murky visual stylization. In the first, longer part, gripping battles, a booming, grandiose soundtrack, hundreds of extras, the charisma of the central trio, the opulent production design and absolute lack of story. Not even a dumb one, simply no story. In the second half for a change we get that typical Asian fatefulness, the charism of the central trio, exaggerated emotions, dialogs for dialogs’ sake and a story. Better late than never. But together as a whole they are simply incompatible. What definitely deserves praise though is the excellent technical aspect and, as usual, Andy Lau. Although he, like the others, has not much to act, but unlike them he disguises this so skillfully that you don’t really notice. It is crying out to be compared to with Musa (The Warrior). But the winner of the two is not clear, since both pictures are equivalent in terms of quality. The Warlords really is captivating, no doubt about that, but only in isolated moments, but not as a whole. The result is an outstanding picture that lacks energy in places, in places story and consistency. Mainly consistency. (12.01.2008)

The rather poor story is saved by the captivating visuals and excellently filmed battles. As for the actors, I have nothing unusual to report. Jet Li is excellent and Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau are also very good. The music (apart from two motifs pinched from Hans Zimmer) is also commendable. (29.03.2008)

The Warlords is a decent historical film with an excellent Jet Li. It's a shame that the film only features one big action sequence which is the best in the genre, the last time I experienced such an intense visually breathtaking ten minutes was with The Raid 2, and again I groaned out loud with joy a few times, but the rest of the film doesn't offer much, there are a few short fights but the uninteresting finale pretty much buries the film, which is a shame. But it still works out to a weak 4* for me. 70% (25.09.2014)