It's 228 A.D. China is divided among the Wei, Wu and Shu kingdoms. Zhao Zilong (Andy Lau) and Luo Ping-An (Sammo Hung) are at an outmanned Shu outpost in Liu Bei's army. They are part of adviser Zhuge Liang's successful surprise attack. Later, Ping-An is ambushed and loses Liu Bei's family. Zilong goes off and rescues Liu Bei's baby son. He comes face to face with warlord Cao Cao. Zilong would become one of the Five Tiger Generals and later face off against Cao Cao's granddaughter Cao Ying (Maggie Q).This tries to be an epic war period piece. While the story is easy to follow, there is a lack of emotional acting. The war action is lacking intensity. It uses too much slow motion and needs to be filmed better. Overall, it's a boring war movie and the performances are lacking. Sammo Hung is the only one bringing any kind of personality.

Based on the classical "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" Daniel Lee ventures back to one of the most important eras of Chinese history - the time of the titular Three Kingdoms, of ever-lasting conflict and battles, which formed many a legend. Here focus is directed to the famed and glorified general Zhao Zilong (an ever-pleasing Andy Lau), a supposedly undefeated warrior, who brought glory to the the kingdom of Liu Bei. Backed by the military genius of Zhuge Liang (Cunxin Pu) and the remaining Five Tiger Generals, the heroes bathed in glory.Opulent, radiant the settings, scenery, cinematography, lighting and general art direction borders on perfection with each shot nurtured and tended too is this lavish epic. With appropriate heroic pathos to accompany the story-telling Zhao Zilong is presented as a chaste and immaculate warrior, as if almost striving towards a Buddhist transcendence. Unrivalled in battle, loved by all men and glorified even by contemporaries, Zhao shines even when riding out by himself against an entire army. Naturally such a directorial choice can't be criticised, similarly as chanson de geste type poems are what they are: glorified monuments of heroic deeds, unabashedly singing praise to the main protagonist. In a take it or leave it deal, Zhao Zilong is a hero, unfailing and relentless in pursuit of unification of the kingdoms, even in tragedy a man suit for tall tales of glory.However "Three Kingdoms" falters due to one rather overbearing glitch: lack of middle story. The depiction of Zhao Zilong's life basically limits itself to an extravagant presentation of two moments of his story: the beginning and the end of his legend. Unfortunately Daniel Lee fails to even trouble himself with building any back-story to the character (who was he? where did he come from? what motivated him?) or worse yet fails to build any backbone to Zilong, instead fast-forwarding us from his initial feat of bravery as a young man, straight into the time of him being an elderly general, the sole remaining of the Five Tiger Generals, right before what was to be his final battle.The whole context of in between is forfeited, thus never even truly affording the audience an understanding as to the prominence of his battle achievements or allowing him to build an emotional connection with viewers. Such a thinly presented story is however aptly summarised in the fading line of the movie itself "How many things before and after fade into gossip and laughter."

China has been churning out historical war films like there's no tomorrow, and THREE KINGDOMS is yet another in a long line of similar lavish and stylish epics. This one's a co-production with South Korea and sees Andy Lau yet again playing a brave and loyal soldier who finds himself battling immense odds in ancient China.THREE KINGDOMS certainly looks the part, with hulking battle sequences featuring huge armies massing and meeting on sweeping plains. The quality of the effects is such that you can't tell that some of these soldiers are CGI animations, like in LORD OF THE RINGS; who knows, maybe they aren't! The action choreography is slightly blurry, so that it's easy to miss crucial detail in the battle sequences, and there's a slight over-reliance on wirework, but for the most part this is a vicious, viscous piece of cinematography.The storyline is equally interesting, with Andy Lau playing a guy who rises from the ranks to become a hero, and Sammo Hung supporting him in an atypical part of a cowardly man who also ends up rising high. Unfortunately, the viewer is also saddled with the overrated Maggie Q (NAKED WEAPON) playing a warrior queen; everything about her screams artifice and hollowness to me, but the good news is that she isn't given too much screen time. More dependable genre stalwarts like Ti Lung and Rongguang Yu are given meaty roles, however.The first half of the film depicts a fairly typical rise-to-power type storyline, but the second half is much more interesting, with events skipping forward twenty years in the future and the outcome much more uncertain. In fact, it gets better as it goes on, featuring a climax that can only be described as epic in feel. THREE KINGDOMS might be easy to miss amid a welter of similar product, but it's certainly entertaining enough to reward the viewer's attention.

It seems as though it is only a half finished project. A first time joint venture- a major motion picture project put together by the Chinese and the Korean production teams, the Chinese took part in pre-production; from writing up the screen play to directing (a Chinese guy who made Jet Li's "Black Mask), acting & filming while the Korean team took care of most of the post production (& funding), the CGI, and scoring.With almost unlimited amount of funding and the pool of world-class production talents in Asia, I cannot help but wonder how an opportunity like this could have gone this wrong. The famous Chinese classic- the three kingdoms - is an epic war story that one could not find its proper match in its scale in any part of the world. The movie deserved more than only a 90 min. duration. Why Why Why did the director and its team decide to cut out anything that resembled a real drama? Who knows. Jhon Woo wanted to give the project a proper attention, so in his upcoming three kingdoms project,'the red cliff' he is devoting 4 hours to tell the story.The action sequences, camera works, set designs, costumes, and props, and even the score, you name it, they were all top notch. But Why? Why no Drama? Why could't the director decide to use another 30 more minutes to supplement the sheer absence of story-telling and the sufficient characterization of each of the major characters ? It would only have made the film 120 minutes, which is still within the main stream block buster length range. Besides I bet that anyone who came to see the movie must have expected something more of a... "brave heart" type of epic story and heart wrenching human drama and understood appreciatively even if the movie went more than 2 hours.What a waste...indeed !!! I am a big fan of Three kingdoms and Any Lau, so i will always love any project that has anything to do with those 2 elements, but this one.... oh... a surprisingly disappointing project, indeed. I gave it a 5 out of ten, because as I mentioned, the picture is only a half-finished and at least that half was pretty good.