I am always on the lookout for movies outside Hollywood and therefore was really excited to find this movie as original version with subtitles; I think I haven't seen any Chinese movies before, when it comes to Asian Cinema, only Japanese and Korean cinema. So I had to visit this show to see 影 (pronounced 'Ying').

The movie plays during the period of the "Three Kingdoms" (220-280) in China: The kingdom of Pei lost the important city Jing Zhou to the neighboring kingdom Yang when the commander Ziyu loses a duel to the commander Yang Chang. Ziyu yearns for revenge and wants to recapture Jing Zhou, however the King of Pei, Peiliang is spineless and rather stomaches every disgrace even if it leads to his peoples contempt, as long as he can keep the peace. And thus, in his shadows his subordinates begin to plot and work on their own goals...

While the trailer suggest this movie to be action-packed including foolish martial arts stunts (if you watch the trailer you'll see armies fighting with umbrellas that have razor blades instead of cloth or use them to slide down slopes). However, this is misleading. Zhang Yimou's movie nearly feels a bit arthousy, with a large number of really slow paced scenes, some scenes being totally silent, short dialogues where the subtile facial expressions and subcontext need to be taken into account. Actually, the director trusts the viewer with as much intelligence that he leaves a lot of things unsaid. Instead, the movie focuses on great imagery, and presents a visual feast for your eyes. Also, the whole movie plays with a lot of symbolism. You'll obviously see the "Yin and Yang"-Symbol, with "Yin" meaning wet, feminine, passive, quiet and "Yang" the opposites. And our shadow fighters attack the kingdom of "Yang", using a new, feminine fighting style; all these characteristics can be found and seem to be easily distributed to the different characters, but soon you'll see, that as Yin and Yang, positions will switch, making the story more complex and interesting. Thus also the color grading is focused on the colors black, white and grey, giving the movie a different look that I have never seen. Besides the imagery that looks like Chineese paintings, and all those symbolism we also have a great set and costume design. And last but not least, the music and how it is integrated into the movie is also phenomenal.

On the negative side, I have to say that in the beginning I had a real hard time to get into the movie. The flick starts with a few text screens and than just throws you in, and hearing a lot of foreign names as well as seeing a couple of people that actually look alike (in clothing, hairstyle, etc.) made it not easier. So the first round about 20 minutes I was a bit lost and had my problems following. But I am not sure if I can count this as a negative aspect of the movie. Same goes for rather strange cultural aspects, e.g. there is a scene, where the King asks the commander to play an instrument and sing with his wife, and she refuses, excusing that she has distracted her husband from his duties and that, if she has to play she'll cut of her fingers. She then plays and after that grabs the knife. Her husband stops her and instead cuts of his hair, which is filmed in such a dramatic way, and the entire court is extremely shocked to see this happening. And I was like "uhm... what's just happening?"

These things made it a bit hard in the beginning, but after getting into the movie you'll get a really great move that is worth watching. I'll rate it 8/10 points.

Good point: it's beautiful. Very very beautiful. The visual style, where almost everything is black and white but the skin tones, combined with the scenery, be it out side, the royal audience hall or the grotto really has a stunning effect.

Bad point: it's boring. Very very boring. It's pretty slow, the story has not much to bring apart from a little palace intrigue. Even the fights are not that interesing, though it could have been because I was half sleeping because of the rest of the movie.

The story and events in the movie are indistinguishable from most other Chinese historic movies, it's based on a part of the 3 kingdoms story, as usual, there a re long ceremonial scenes with the emperor, long scenes of playing zither, and some flamboyant fight with unorthodox weapons (though not too extravagant here, it stays human, no flying around in trees). The scenes in the royal hall are wayyy wayyy too long (though the decor is superb).

The whole thing and interactions between the characters almost constantly don't make sense, be it the relation between the general and his shadow, the king demoting/firing/threatening to kill high level soldiers, but after that they're still there, and even talk back to him, the general is still leading the assault and they're not killed on the spot for behaving like this ?

The fact that [spoiler]the king knew everything all along[/spoiler] comes out of nowhere, specially because if it was the case, it makes no sense he would have acted that way.

The fighting training is ridiculous. Jingzhou has been trying for supposedly years and can't even hold his ground against an almost dying [spoiler]general[/spoiler] that is not even using his usual weapon. And they want to send him fight a duel with the guy who beat the shit out of [spoiler]the general[/spoiler] in his prime in the first place ?? That's the plan ?
Then a comment from the general's wife, a one minute, one round fight where he's not even holding the umbrella/weapon himself and that's it, you're ready, go kick his ass ?! At this point they also have about one day to train a hundred soldiers to fight this way.

There would be no reason for the princess to act that way (or maybe there was one while I was sleeping, but I doubt it).

Finally the end scene with everybody betraying everybody while everybody still know they're being betrayed, was poorly done and again, way too long and slow.

So nice visuals, shitty story. I think the fights might have been at least a little interesting if the rest of the movie had been able to keep me awake to appreciate them, but I'll never know.