Two's a company and three's a crowd. In movieland, that is almost always true, with no black and white, but with shades of grey instead. Of late, period or martial chivalry movies either look aesthetically beautiful like Zhang Yimou's trilogy of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, or opt for the grittier, more down to earth look with plenty of dirt and grime like Battle of Wits. Director Peter Chan's The Warlords follows the latter with its strained colors and muck on everyone's face, in parallel of the grey that befalls everyone in this tale of a trio's struggles with the System, and amongst themselves.

Those who are familiar with stories featuring similar themes like brotherly bonds, blood brothers and the likes, will find that The Warlords, when striped away to its core, conforms to the same. But what Peter Chan did, and I thought succeeded, was to fuse really hard core battle action sequences with character driven drama, and having the stellar leads of Andy Lau, Jet Li and Takeshi Kaneshiro play something quite unlike their usual on screen personae, well, except maybe Kaneshiro. Publicity talk has been rife of Jet Li's unbelievable pay package taking up almost 40% of the production cost, but if that was true, I'd guess it must've been a reward to take on something risky (to a screen idol that is),and as it turned out, it could instead be a career defining role for Li, who doesn't get as much opportunity to show off those slick martial arts moves, no doubt in part wanting to stick the movie as close to reality as possible (bye, shawdowless kick!)

Li opens the movie as a disgraced general Ma Xin Yi, who was betrayed and only survived a massacre of his troops by the cowardly act of playing dead (Yes! Jet Li, playing a coward, pretending to be dead! Told you!) In his quest to survive incognito, he chances upon a bandit Zhang Wen Xiang, played by Kaneshiro, who acknowledges General Ma's fighting prowess, and recruits him to the gang of Lau's Cao Er-Hu. However, the bandit life is not for a man of war, who sees the poor bandit village getting their arses kicked when soldiers of a rival court raid them, and thus finds the catalyst to encourage the bandit men to draw salary and food, by joining the army. Suspicious and needing assurance of the General, the trio of Ma, Zhang and Cao sign a blood oath, and thus the blood brothers are born - one a charismatic leader, one a general looking to reclaim his honour, and one in every bonding, the earnest and faithful follower.

As the story unfolds, you begin to see how de-facto leaders always feel threatened by young upstarts, both in the politics within the small band of brothers, and in the bigger picture with the court officials. With individuals, there's almost always a clash of ideals, with many methods available in achieving common objectives, and one man's insatiable ambition will put the others at risk in Machiavellian terms. Finding themselves stronger in unity, repeated success on the battlefield start to change folks and reveal true intentions. Even the rule of law established becomes subject to interpretation based on the moment's convenience, and core principles like honour and gentlemen's agreement get tossed out of the window. As innermost desires are revealed, you'll begin to see how seriously or not, the blood oath is being treated by each individual, especially when one finds the other being externally threatened, or betrayal of temptation in the highest order courtesy of female lead Xu Jinglei's Lian as the token flower amongst the thorns.

However, the story bore strength in its presentation of key moments where you'll be called upon to question and even judge the characters, their decisions, and at times, forced to choose sides. You may be convinced by one argument, yet understand the necessity of why something else was done instead. And I'd think you'll probably won't stick to one side for the most parts, and such bringing out the shades of grey that you'll experience for yourself, if you happen to be in the shoes of the trio's foot soldiers. Naivety is truly unkind, and sometimes one is just a pawn in situations far beyond one's grasp, and you can see how this rings true for almost every character here.

While it is easy to dwell on the battle sequences and make this one heck of an action romp in the veins of 300 (ok, so this one had its "108 heroes" moment in a nod towards probable upcoming Water Margin movies),which it did look to suspiciously tread along the same vein, I thought the filmmakers here were smart to know when to show gore, with the decapitations, piercings and the likes, to knowing when to retract such in your face moments for maximum effect. In the hands of a lesser director, perhaps a key brutal scene will mean to show the obvious full frontal, but in showing you something else instead, with focus on individual reactions and the reactions of compatriots at one point in time, I thought it achieved a more powerful effect, with the audience I'm with tonight completed dumbfounded and silent throughout the scene.

A remake of sorts of Shaw Brothers' Ci Ma some 35 years ago (directed by Chang Cheh and starring David Chiang, Ti Lung and Chen Kuan Tai in the lead roles),Peter Chan has brought to us a worthy Chinese epic movie with lavish production values, and one deserving of being called a magnificent effort. And yes, this deserves a watch in seeing who's actually playing who, and with a stellar cast to boot, I don't see why not. Highly recommended!

I can certainly respect this Chinese production. After all, the battle sequences are huge, the action very real and the look of the film is top-notch. Yet, despite all this I have a few reservations that keep this from being a truly great film.

The first problem is that most non-Chinese will have no idea what's happening much of the time unless they research into the Taiping Rebellion FIRST. While there is a prologue that gives a bit of information, it is very scant--and leaves many, many unanswered questions that you can only understand if you have read up on this era in Chinese history. Some good examples are the significance of the crucifix necklace---the viewer will have no idea where it came from or why it's there. And, who were the rebels and why were they rebelling against the Qing empire? Most importantly, who were the good guys and who weren't? Interestingly enough, who is the hero and villain overall in this rebellion seems to vary over time. During Mao's reign, he felt that the Taiping rebels were the good guys as they represented the forces of socialism (with their redistribution of the land and equality). Today, the prevailing attitude in the country seems to be that the rebels were bad because they brought disunity. ALL of this might have been interesting to learn about in the film, but alas I learned none of this in "Warlords".

Second, while the battle sequences were amazing and I was glad that they didn't make war seem bloodless (oooh, it's VERY bloody in this film!!),the film occasionally suffered from over-kill, per se. In other words, with so many battles and so much killing, the senses are overloaded and the film manages in spite of all the brutality and severed limbs to actually bore--at least it did do with me.

But, despite these serious complaints, I DO recommend you see the film--provided you read up on the facts first. It's a particularly great film to see on the big screen or on a huge plasma TV. And, the plot involving the three blood brothers is pretty interesting and the acting very good. One final important reason to see the film for weirdo purists like me is that you CAN turn off the English-dubbed version and just watch it in Chinese with English subtitles--and I appreciate that option.

THE WARLORDS is a typically overblown historical epic, full of pomposity and grandeur, a film of heroism, murder and larger than life characters. Such films have been very popular in Asia in recent years, with notable highlights including wushu flick HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS and the quite wonderful CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. THE WARLORDS never equals the heights of those two films, but it is a good effort, a fine display of historical spectacle mixed with a three-hander character drama.

My main complaint with the film is that it doesn't really know what it wants to be. It starts off as an action flick, but there's only really one notable fight scene in the whole movie. This involves a ferocious battle between two armies, with Jet Li taking to the field and cutting down swathes of the enemy. Extremely tight editing and a refreshing emphasis on the nastiness of warfare makes this scene one of the highlights of the year, but the rest of the film doesn't match it. Soon we move into a more thoughtful, character-led drama that somehow doesn't ring quite true to me. The acting is very good, and the scenes are all well shot with great proficiency in the technical details, but there's a hollowness here that just left me detached from what was going on. It may be that the story is overly familiar, or that some elements – the character of Lian and her relationships with the leads – are glossed over and feel false.

I'd say that this is a film that could have been so much more. It marks an admirable move away from the outrageous 'flying' and gravity-defying situations found in the wushu genre, moving towards gritty realism and grimy authenticity. There are a handful of truly great moments, involving some wonderful acting, like the situation with the four thousand prisoners. But the way the film gradually moves away from greatness down to the climax between two individuals is disappointing and feels rushed. Jet Li shines with some of his best acting ever in a couple of places, and Takeshi Kaneshiro is the kind of amiable guy the crowd loves: good looking, fair and just. Andy Lau is also great, but used too little. Overall, it's a case of 'what could have been' rather than 'what is'; nice film, but no classic.