Warriors of Heaven and Earth's plot is thankfully simple compared to many other movies of the genre, which can come off as too complicated for their own good, especially to western viewers. Jiang Wen plays a solider named Li who becomes a criminal after he refuses to kill civilians. Banished to the desolate western part of China, Li (along with some loyal members of his platoon) makes his living guarding caravans from bandits. During one such job, Li runs afoul of a local overlord named Master An (Wang Xueqi) after he refuses to give up a precious artifact a young monk is carrying. While trying to battle An's men, Li also has to contend with an imperial guard (Nakai Kiichi) who has been sent by the Emperor himself to bring Li to justice.

The lines are drawn fairly early in the movie's proceedings. There's not a whole lot in the way of double-crosses or big secrets, and that works for this film. Director He Ping always keeps the movie going -- there's not any wasted time in subplots or romantic schmaltz. Warriors of Heaven and Earth reminded me a lot of Kurosawa's samurai pictures or Ford's westerns. The film lets the characters and the story develop naturally, without adding in a lot of fluff. Even though most of the characters are fairly stock in nature, the movie actually brings a lot of depth to them without hammering the viewer over the head with big showy overly-dramatic scenes.

But don't worry if you're the kind of viewer who couldn't give a crap about things like plot and characterization -- the action here is top-notch stuff. While it kind of lacks that "epic" feeling a lot of the great movies in the genre have (though, truthfully, that might be due to the VCD's full frame format than anything else) the stuff featured here is outstanding. While it does take a bit to get going, by the end of the film, if the fights don't get your heart pumping, then you need to check yourself into the hospital. Eschewing the current computer-fu craze, Warriors of Heaven and Earth creates some of the most hard-hitting and explosive martial arts scenes this reviewer has seen in quite a while. When that's combined with tight story-telling, you have the makings of something that's (hopefully) going to be considered a classic a few years down the line after more people have had the opportunity to take in this excellent motion picture.

Li and Lai Xi will finally meet, but agree to delay their final fight until Li finish his agreement to bring back to safety a caravan carrying a Buddhist monk. However to Li’s ignorance, the monk is secretly carrying a sacred and powerful pagoda that attracts the attention of a region’s ruthless overlord. Followed by his former friends soldiers, Li will face the cruelty of the desert, the region’s barbaric bandits and the brutality of the overlord’s men before he can finally face his ultimate fight with Lai Xi.

Review: The long and old Silk Road, there were always all kinds of people: merchant, foreigners, soldiers, and of course heroes. In a lot of Chinese legends, the west of China, the place forever covered by the sands, where the Silk Road passed by, was always where the knights appeared. This is where this story takes place, it happened in the strongest period of Chinese history—Tang, and the director He Ping used almost 20 years’ preparation to describe it.

There has been a lot of discussions in China about how people compared this movie with Hero directed by Zhang Yimou. Maybe it was because of their similar names in Chinese. I personally cannot see any strong similarity. These are two completely different movies: from the history background, the way they shot, the characters, the story type and whatever. If we must do some comparisons, that is: both movies tried to create big epic story, however Warriors at last forgot the creation of the characters; Hero’s story line was a bit pale, but at least all the characters were plentiful.

In fact, if someone watched the South-Korean movie Musa, they should find much more similarity. Both happened in the desert, both needed protect something to somewhere, both had enemies tracking them and both had a woman as the vase. A strange coincidence? Or an incredible similarity? However, I don’t think the director He Ping just wanted to make a copy, or else he wouldn’t have used 20 years to prepare his film.

If the first half of the movie is a Wu Xia type or 8th century’s police action type, the last half fall in the fantasy genre. Comparing to the ending of Musa, this movie’s ending gave us a lot of unbelievable elements. Seems it wanted to tell us that heroes are not born as heroes but in fact normal as everybody. However, one day they had good luck and God choose to help them, so they become heroes. Does this means that the heroes in Warriors of Heaven and Earth are not true hero but heroes for the situation? Did it want to proof the old Chinese word: “the heroic appears by the current situation”? What exactly are we were really forward to is not very clear as it seem that the director began to fell insufficiency of idea in the middle of the shooting.

This time, I won’t talk about Jiang Wen as there is no doubted about it, he’s an excellent actor. But how about Nakai Kiichi, the famous Japanese actor? I didn’t had chance to watch any of his movies before, except a TV series he played with Faye Wong several years ago. This time, he plays a Japanese emissary who is strong in appearance but soft in heart. He always wants to go home but can’t, so his missing become the words in his letters to his old mother. He always speaks Chinese with very strange accent, but every time he speaks, you can feel the power. He didn’t say a lot, but he is such a good player that you cannot neglect his existence.

Watching this movie, you will get some great surprises in the beginning, but also few disappointments when you reach the end. It’s not a perfect movie, but it is a beautiful movie that shows us the different scenery of the western China. As a Chinese recent commercial movie, Warrior of Heaven and Earth, is a fine example at what we can expect in quality for future Chinese movie.