The Great Wall is long, but “The Great Wall” is short. It may be a second-rate “Lord of the Rings,” but at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Matt Damon, doing half an Irish accent, plays William, a European mercenary come to ancient China with his sidekick Tovar (Pedro Pascal) in search of thieving opportunities, principally the “black powder” that they’ve heard can turn air into fire. Captured by authorities and brought to the Great Wall as prisoners, they instead prove to be useful fighters when — don’t you hate it when this happens? — the wall is attacked by a rampaging army of lizards the size of horses.
William, who happens to be the greatest archer on Earth and is also one of those lone-wolf types who insists he trusts no one, becomes fond of the pretty commander Lin Mae (Jing Tian), who, along with her fellow lady warriors in cool blue uniforms, slays monsters by bungee jumping hundreds of feet off platforms to spear the brutes. With a bit of exposition of the way things work provided by a fellow Westerner (Willem Dafoe) living in China, we learn that the monsters can be subdued by use of a large magnet, but the only real way to defeat them is to kill their queen, from whom all direction emanates.
So: pretty silly stuff, but not a whole lot sillier than “The Lord of the Rings.” Director Zhang Yimou (“House of Flying Daggers”) is mostly interested in the visual glories of mass fight scenes, just as in previous films he found a balletic grace to violence. So he hurries past questions of motive — or just leaves them out entirely. William transforms from cynical loner to one of those “There’s-no-I-in-team” guys solely because of his platonic friendship with Lin Mae. The two never share so much as a hearty handshake, and this middle-aged desperado is going to completely reorient his outlook for her?
Some of the film’s more adolescent viewers may say, “Great, who needs all the yucky smoochy stuff anyway?” But what’s unnerving about “The Great Wall,” an East-West collaboration that is the most expensive production ever made inside China, is how Hollywood is slowly allowing prudish Chinese state censors to exercise veto power over script elements. China dislikes adult themes and demands films shown there be thematically rudimentary. We might be seeing a lot more blockbusters that have the stiff 1950s-feel of “The Great Wall.”
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
