Arriving in the US this past weekend and earning some US $21.5 million as of Tuesday morning, the hybrid monster movie/war epic is a curious specimen, representing Zhang at both his best and worst. The first coproduction between China and the US directed by an A-list auteur from either country, Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall was long anticipated, and then anticlimactic once its Chinese run last December failed to attain the record-breaking earnings necessary to justify its megabudget cost. The Great Wall (2016), story by Max Brooks, Edward Zwick & Marshall Hershkovitz screenplay by Carlo Bernard & Doug Miro, Tony Gilroy directed by Zhang Yimouĭistributed by Universal Pictures (cinemas here) Periodically, CFI will review and point readers in the direction of noteworthy US releases of contemporary commercial and independent Chinese titles. Though they receive virtually no publicity outside the non-Chinese community, these films are more than worth seeking out by anyone serious about engaging the Chinese industry, understanding the Chinese sensibility and familiarizing themselves with China’s talent pool. But in major US cities, mainstream Chinese films are increasingly available: thanks to Wanda’s purchase of AMC and distributors like China Lion, they get American theatrical releases practically simultaneous to their premieres at home. Save your money.Every day while CFI’s Hollywood readers take in the business of the Chinese film industry, the actual movies can sometimes seem exotic or remote. Regardless of all that, I’ll come back around to the positive aspects of the movie, which is that it was beautiful to look at and there were some pretty awesome action sequences, so I'll give director Yimou Zhang that. It’s not enough for me to want to recommend it to anyone, though. I got a laugh out of it, some may you will as well. If you want to see Damon give one of the worst and most embarrassing performances of his career, then this is the movie for you. They were just thrown into a film they didn’t fit into. This is one of those rare moments where I felt embarrassed for the actors. I think the movie would have been slightly better had they not cast any popular American actors in the movie. I know the reason they were cast in the film was so that the movie would have an international appeal, but it just seemed to make the movie worse. Having actors like Damon and Dafoe in the film were incredibly distracting. He had this weird accent in the film that I couldn’t quite figure out, but it sounded like an Irish-American accent that you’d hear in the movie Gangs of New York. There were moments in the film when I was laughing because his acting and the dialogue he delivered was just so bad. Their characters were so awkwardly developed, especially Damon’s.
The movie probably would have been a lot better had Matt Damon or Willem Dafoe not been part of it. I should also probably mention that the dialogue was terrible. It was a big mess! I’m sure there was a good story in there somewhere, but it seemed like there were huge sections of the story removed and the audience was left wondering what in the hell was going on with certain characters and other elements of the story. This film was jumping all over the place, there was no flow, and the story was just littered with holes. So yes, the movie was incredibly fun to look at, but unfortunately, it was just a hollow story with an amusingly bad script. All of that stuff complimented many of the film’s awesome action sequences. The movie was visually stunning, and I loved the epic scope of it and all of the costume, setting, and creature designs. Unfortunately, The Great Wall was a big disappointment. I enjoy watching these films, and the Chinese have made some beautifully epic martial arts fantasy films in the past. I had high hopes for Matt Damon’s fantasy adventure film The Great Wall because I enjoy this particular genre of films.
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