Rating of
1.5/4
"An Empress And The Warriors" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 02/16/12
An ambitious general assassinates his king, but when his daughter is appointed successor he attempts a coup to wrest power from her. Yet another pretender to Crouching Tiger's throne, An Empress And The Warriors probably looks great in the trailers. Some impressive art design means that the costumes and sets are very attractive and there are a couple of decent action sequences, but underneath this film is just another martial arts B-movie with window dressing. Stealing ideas from both Crouching Tiger and Gladiator, the script is so lacking in subtlety and sophistication it reminded me of a bad Disney cartoon. The peformances of all the central characters are so wooden thay make a Thunderbirds puppet look multi layered and versatile, the constant and overbearing soundtrack lurches from pomposity to schmaltz in pretty much the same way as the plot does and the dialogue is so corny it might as well have crop circles cut into it. Melodramatic, episodic and occasionally laughable (see the jaw droppingly lame hot air balloon sequence) I'm afraid that as nice as it is to look at, the beauty of this Empress is only skin deep.
