Such a frustrating disappointment

Great Film overall

Brilliant and touching

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

I like martial arts films. I really do. And often I forgive them their silly stories and lack of logic. But not this time. This wannabe epic fails at everything.For some reason, probably lost in translation, the Chinese emperor wants to eliminate all martial artists and has put a bounty on all of them. Some kind of wild mercenary army using cheap prop mechanical weapons erases entire villages on its path claiming a bounty for each slain person. Obviously imperial officers are pretty dumb...We soon learn about an endangered village which is in dire need of help. this part of the script is basically a rip off of Seven Samurai. Unfortunately the villagers personalities are so off-putting, that one doesn't care about them at all. They are just a bunch of hate filled, xenophobic idiots. I won't go into the confusing, paradox details here.Somehow they learn about 7 sword wielding heroes and send for them for help. Said heroes reside on a cold, snow covered mountain top in actual holes in the rock. There is absolutely no clue what the heck they are doing up there all day.Some troubles later the heroes join the villagers in their task to defend their homes. I don't really recall any good or entertaining martial arts scenes in the middle part of the movie.Now the movie begins to drag on. Slowly. Very, very slowly. It tries to give every(!) character an elaborate, cliché ridden melodramatic background. It ties hard. Way too hard. Lengthy landscape shots dubbed with overly emotional music accompany these parts. The only interesting character in the entire movie happens to be the main villain. He isn't nice or charismatic, but he makes up for it with insanity, which sadly is the only entertaining thing you will witness for about 120 minutes.At the end there's finally a good fight scene. About 2 Minutes long. That's all. I had to endure 150 Minutes of terrible movie making getting there. Absolutely not worth the time.

I really wanted to like this movie - and there is a lot to like in it. There are some spectacular fight scenes, especially near the end, great photography, and some good acting (but also some awful examples of bad casting). But the whole thing is let down by an incoherent, plot, numerous sub plots that should have been deleted, and a very predictable storyline. The attempts to make a more earthy, back to basics swordplay movie is welcome, but it clearly needed a more disciplined approach. For a movie of this length there is really no excuse for not working harder to develop the characters and background to the action scenes. Some posters here have accused it of being a rip-off of Seven Samurai - it clearly is not. However, I can't help wishing someone sat the makers down in front of Seven Samurai (or any Kurosawa period movie), to show that you can make a great action movie while also telling a complex story - and give characters that you want to believe in.

I mean I am really flattered by this movie. I bow in front of Hark Tsui who did IMO a real EPIC movie! The four hour version would have been definitely better, however, the 153 minutes version give you an impression. In my understanding the love story could have been a lot more extensive than it is in the move. The martial arts part is just overwhelming! I have never seen anything like this before and I saw some - I guess some people know better. This is really a great movie, which stole from other movies, however, it stays unique and is no copy. Hark Tsui, if you read this and the studio, please give us the 4 hours directors cut! For me especially the scenes with the meteroites on mount heaven lacked a lot of story building. Highly recommended movie for the Asian and Star Wars movie fan.

Went into this movie thinking its good to be another crouching tiger, or hero.But wait its not, its a action packed movie where flying around is not a factor they stick to the ground with some cool swords and evil villains...I would by this movie and watch it without English dubbing and watch in the actual language. So if it was good with English dubbing got to be even better.Great cinama beautiful shots.must watch ...