The Great Wall/长城/Cháng Chéng (2016) - Damon appears foolish in unexciting, major US-Chinese monster turkey

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+ 2nd Worst Movie of the Year

 

Things are exploding left and right and a frightening siege is apparently taking place, but star Matt Damon is on the wall with a bow and arrow on this poster for Yimou Zhang's The Great Wall

An Irish mercenary adventurer with a Spanish companion is searching for gunpowder in Song dynasty China [about 1,000 years ago], but they come into a massive battle against the monsters that the Great Wall are meant to keep out.

The Great Wall is written by Carlo Bernard (The Uninvited (2009)), Doug Miro (The Great Raid (2005)) and Tony Gilroy (State of Play (2009)), with Max Brooks (World War Z (2013, novel)), Edward Zwick (The Siege (1998)) and Marshal Herskovitz (A Marriage (2009, TV movie)) contributing story elements, and directed by Yimou Zhang (Red Sorghum (1988)).

It is an ambitious, giant production, which attempts to please both a Chinese and an American/Western audience with the result becoming an often involuntarily comical compromise. The presence of Matt Damon's (Syriana (2005)) ponytailed character alone in this old-Chinese context is comical: He is a hero of Western fabric, full of one-liners and incredible fighting skills. Across from him are Chinese by the boatloads, who appear very different; saluting uniformity and sacrifice for the majority's improvement. The Great Wall also marks a major cultural meeting that may be more than a bit anxiety-provoking for the China-skeptical Westerner.

There are impressive sets and costumes, strange, not very interesting monsters and a thankfully contained running time. The main  problem for this film, though, is a fundamentally unexciting story: The Great Wall marks a cultural summit that so far as the plot goes never really takes place.

 

Related post:

 

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 150 mil. $

Box office: 334.9 mil. $

= Flop (returned 2.23 times its cost)

[The Great Wall premiered 6 December (Beijing) and runs 103 minutes. Shooting took place in China and New Zealand from March 2015 - ?. It is Zhang's first English-language film and reportedly the costliest movie shot in China to its day. It reportedly employed 100 on-set translators to help with the communication between the international cast and crew. It opened #3, behind holdover hits The Lego Batman Movie and Fifty Shades Darker, to an 18.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another two weekends in the top 5 (#3-#4) and grossed 45.5 mil. $ (13.6 % of the total gross). It was the film's 2nd biggest market; the biggest by far was China with 170.9 mil. $ (51 %); 3rd biggest was Russia with 10.9 mil. $ (3.3 %). 110-120 mil. $ were reportedly spent to market the film worldwide, making its overall loss in the neighborhood of 75 mil. $ according to Deadline Hollywood. Regarding critique of his part in the film, Damon has stated: "For the first time, a film deeply rooted in Chinese culture, with one of the largest Chinese casts ever assembled, is being made at tentpole scale for a world audience. I believe that is a trend that should be embraced by our industry." The Communist Party of China have had negative reviews of the film removed from online sites in China. Zhang returned with Shadow/Ying (2018). Damon returned in Downsizing (2017). The Great Wall is rotten at 35 % with a 4.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Great Wall?

Pawn Sacrifice (2014) - Zwick, Knight and Maguire's mediocre chess genius movie

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The evocative but dour poster for Edward Zwick's Pawn Sacrifice

 

Bobby Fischer became an obsessive chess master already as a boy. When, as an adult, he is to face Russian Spassky in the chessboard clash between the world's superpowers, the US and the USSR, his psyche creaks on him.

 

Fischer is not a wildly sympathetic character, and the game of chess doesn't really get opened up in Pawn Sacrifice, which for some time makes it seem somewhat grey and dull. But as it reaches its Reykjavik showdown, it grows some legs, especially through the engaged performances of Tobey Maguire (The Great Gatsby (2013)) and Liev Schreiber (Salt (2010)) as the two chess masters. We have got a complex character in Fischer to be sure, but he also remains too enigmatic until the very end. Pawn Sacrifice is not a bad film, but I don't feel we get far enough into Fischer for it to fully succeed.

It is written by Steven Knight (Amazing Grace (2006)) and directed by Edward Zwick (Glory (1989)).

 

Related review:
 

Edward Zwick: Blood Diamond (2006) - Fundamentally flawed, unsuccessful Africa-venture with important issues at its core

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 19 mil. $

Box office: 5.5 mil. $

= Box office disaster

[Pawn Sacrifice premiered September 11 (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 115 minutes. Filming took place in Reykjavik, Montreal and LA from October - December 2013. The film opened #33 to a 0.2 mil. $ first weekend in 33 theaters, widening to #12 with 1 mil. $ in 781 theaters in North America, where it grossed 2.4 mil. $ (43.6 % of the total gross). Its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 427k $ (7.8 %) and Spain with 230k $ (4.2 %). The film is far from historically accurate, as is revealed here. Pawn Sacrifice is fresh at 72 % with a 6.5 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Pawn Sacrifice?

Blood Diamond (2006) - Fundamentally flawed, unsuccessful Africa-venture with important issues at its core

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Djimon Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio in crisis on the poster for Edward Zwick's Blood Diamond

QUICK REVIEW:

A white Zimbabwean, Archer, smuggles conflict diamonds out of Sierra Leone, but now crosses tracks with an attractive journalist and a local man, whose family disappears in the country's civil war.
I am generous in giving the flawed Blood Diamond these 3 ♥'s. The film is a mix of a Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)-like character in a Romancing the Stone (1984)-like adventure with real, African horrors behind every corner of the tale. The film is depressing and overly long at 143 minutes. And predictable most of the way.
But the main problem is Leonardo DiCaprio's (The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)) character, our defeatist 'hero', who in real life is a really terrible crook. He is very hard to accept as 'our guy', and the script doesn't seem to acknowledge this. The worst scene is the one in which SPOILER he orders an air bombing and thereafter jumps heroically around amongst the deadly bombs. - Pretty infuriating stuff!
Djimon Hounsou's (The Tempest (2010)) character would have been much better suited as the protagonist. As it is, he provides the film's few moving moments, albeit soaked in overwrought pathos.
Blood Diamond cannot withstand scrutiny altogether and is fundamentally unsatisfying: Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind (2001)) is never with DiCaprio, which is a letdown; the climax is, - most anticlimactically, - SPOILER a phone conversation among the two of them(!); and the final scene of Hounsou getting hailed in Europe by a room full of white people is unbelievable: Where the !Zx?=!#! is his family? In Sierra Leone? Someplace else in Africa?
I give Blood Diamond its full 3rd ♥ just for giving attention to some important topics; child soldiers and blood diamonds. But it is still irrevocably a bad movie.
It is directed by Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai (2003)), who is now engaged in Pawn Sacrifice (2015), a film about a famous chess game (really!) and The American Can (2015), a Katrina survival drama with Will Smith.

Related post:

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 100 mil. $
Box office: 171.4 mil. $
= Even Steven

What do you think of Blood Diamond?
Do you know of any better films that deal with child soldiers and/or blood diamonds?