THE WARRIOR AND THE WOLF is a beautiful film to look at. The lush cinematography with its wide landscape shots of endless expanses of wilderness, hilly terrain and distant mountains is a glory to behold. The colours are vivid and the director has a real eye for nature's beauty. Wolves play a large part in the film's background and they've never looked so appealing as they do here. The addition of a wolf pup to the storyline only adds to that feeling.A shame then that in all other respects this is a dog, rather than a wolf, of a film. It starts off muddled, with murky choppily-edited battle sequences and a disjointed feel to the narrative. The erstwhile hero of the piece is a pacifist shepherd one moment and a ruthless leader of men the next. I didn't have a clue what was going on in regards to the historical backdrop and it's always a giveaway of poor writing when they have to keep including on-screen text at regular intervals to tell the viewer what's supposed to be going on.After half an hour or so of this, the action shifts to a supposedly cursed village where the lead character meets a woman and rapes her. Then he rapes her again, and again after that. Eventually, the woman falls in love with her attacker, a plot point that is so repellent as to be purely offensive. The ending of the film just peters out with no real explanation of what's happened or what we just watched. Odagiri plays the lead with the same stony-faced expression from beginning to end and Maggie Q is relegated to a window-dressing role with pretty much all of her scenes taking place in the bedroom. If you're looking for a decent Chinese historical then give this one a wide berth.

For a start, this is not a martial arts movie although I did discover it while browsing through the martial arts section of a online retailer.This movie is short, has very little dialogue and the plot is vague at best.Because of the lack of dialogue it is very difficult to get a feel for any of the main characters or a involvement in what little story there is.Don't let the fact that it is from the same producer as Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fool you into thinking this movie could be any good.

Like the title says, this is one of those movies. Good attempt with many bits of good elements but collaged together into a mess that depending on your tolerance, leave you unsatisfied at the very least.First off, great scenery though heavily filtered that end up ruined the scenes.(At least for me). Music sounds great and make everything more atmospheric. Acting wasn't terrible but could definitely improved. Set design and everything else props wise looks solid. The only big thing then is how the director delivered the story through the film. I haven't read the novel by the original author which this movie is based on so I can't compare. Without getting into too much detail, the story sets during the Han Dynasty of China, revolving a man's journey and encounter at the western frontier where nomadic tribes kept pestering the empire's borders. The focus of the story is on the literal "transformation" of this man before, during and after. The movie involves a lot of fast and short cuts that I personally dislike. There were quite a few of shuffling around the time of the events to fast track the experience of the character(At the start of the movie)to the audience which might turn some people off but I actually liked. Though the cuts were rather short but the movie was a slow one which isn't a bad thing and I honestly liked the first half of the movie with its little guessing game of what happened and some rather good exploitations of inner emotions but as the movie went on, it started to go down hill, eventually ended up in a mess of a movie with too much extra footage that felt shouldn't be there and the ending made for a lot to be desired.This is a movie that had good material to be sure. I am sure the novel would be better than this but this film isn't the worst either. In short, if the film had better editing and "tiding" up, it could have been an enjoyable movie.So take that with a grain of salt.

This movie did look promising but greatly disappoints. I saw the world premier at the Toronto Film Festival and many people left the theatre early because they were so confused and disappointed. The story line fallows this order: 1. There is a war. 2. A man doesn't want to become a warrior. 3. That same man is now the leader of the army. 4. This man is now raping a woman that lives under the ground and keeps her trapped there. 5. The two fall in love. 6. Two wolves (which I think are the lovers) kill the last army leader. This is very confusing because there is no transition at all. You struggle to try to understand what is happening. The director seems to enjoy highlighting the landscape, which was enjoyable to see. But that was the only positive thing that I have about this film.