The usual warrior w/swords extended & horse calvary charge with 1000s of arrows flying. Lots of CGI. The usual emperor uniting China (Qin Dynasty this time). An aside: You've got to wonder if Chinese censorship is all about historical self-promotion. Two swords signifying power are separated; when united they rule the world. An aside #2: Sounds like what China & Russia are aiming for now. After an attack on the Mengs by a baddie group (Zhao Gao) a young female, Menq Xue, is assigned to protect the Dingqin sword. Another, not realistic note, is all the street people are in clean, pressed, not torn clothing w/hair skin immaculately made up.

I'm in fund of Asian cinema as it is still classical and not progressive (woke). Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Thai are the best for action movies in this order (for me). Here the problem is just than the camera work is awful, the realisator tried some style effect, maybe to hide the weak fight scenes. Angle shoots are just chaotic, I mean, the wiever point a view goes to different angle in a random manners making this movie unwachable. Also there are weak slowmotion AND the horodious hand camera filming which is lame, cheap and unprofessional.

This period action drama opens with a huge battle that results in China being unified under a single monarch for the first time. The goal was to create a peace that would endure for generations. The emperor's sword was considered so powerful, that it was re-forged into a pair. One stayed with the emperor. The other sent far away with trusted General Meng to keep anyone from getting both and usurping the new regime. Great plan. For about a decade.

The emperor dies. An underling kills the rest of the family and dispatches hordes of minions to re-take the other sword half. General Meng's daughter escapes with the item, and for the rest of the movie we watch her being chased by lots of baddies, helped along the way by a handful of heroes, including her dad's former disciples, reluctantly wrenched from their idyllic 10-year retirements on account of this treachery.

That plot is fairly common among Asian action fare, so the key here is a matter of style. Director Zhang Yingli plays it soft on the gore, opting for a more lyrical, aesthetic approach to the heroics and high body count. Think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without the romance, as opposed to the high-octane thrills from adrenaline pumpers like most of the work from a Jet Li or Donnie Yen. Much of the bloodshed occurs in slow motion, backed by a complementary score, making those scenes more elegant than visceral. That's not only true for the swordplay, but for several masterfully-framed sequences involving archers.

Western viewers should play close attention to the quiet parts, since the characters and time sequence might otherwise become rather confusing, especially due to several flashbacks interspersed with current proceedings. Those accustomed to the fast-paced, high energy segment of the genre that's dominated since the Hong Kong fare of the 1970s will need to scale down expectations for this relatively quiet production, that embraces viewers with less tolerance for explicit gore. The Emperor's Sword still delivers plenty of epic-level CGI moments and a fair bit of wire work. Several particularly well-choreographed fight sequences justify checking this one out purely on their own merits.