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.