![]() Indeed, the film has already made more than $200 million in China and other markets overseas - but it’s difficult imagining it achieving similar box office success here, despite Damon’s stellar track record and movie star power. ![]() ![]() Directed by the martial-arts genius Zhang Yimou and starring Matt Damon as the Great White Hope along with a number of popular Chinese actors, “The Great Wall” is the most expensive ($135 million) movie ever shot entirely in China and comes across as a naked grab for an East-West box office alliance. ![]() Many dim characters say and do many stupid things throughout the relatively quick (mercifully so) 104 minutes of this action-packed nonsense. Uh, what is our purpose? Do you not SEE the dragon-lizard monsters ripping humans apart and toppling the empire, buddy? Perhaps my favorite moment comes when an army of soldiers from the Great Wall arrive via shaky hot-air balloons (!) in China’s capital city, which has been overrun by thousands of human-eating, building-destroying, Jurassic-looking, dragon-lizard, paranormal monsters known as Taoties.Įven as the ferocious Taoties are chomping up the city, the Emperor’s guards surround the just-landed hot air balloonist soldiers, and one of the guards demands, “What is your purpose here!” If they hadn’t gone with the Great Wall of China as a setting for this movie, a good second choice would have been the Land of Oz.Īfter all, the almost unbelievably ridiculous pseudo-epic “The Great Wall” features a Western hero in a very strange land hot-air balloons armies of screeching creatures, and even a winding, brick road (aka the top of the Wall) where all sorts of colorful characters and harrowing adventures await.Ī pure fantasy set about a thousand years ago during the Song dynasty, with admittedly gorgeous costumes and sets and some pretty cool visual effects, but scads of unintentionally hilarious dialogue and one of the most ludicrous story lines in recent memory, “The Great Wall” is so fantastically misguided and so wonderfully bad, I could see some coming for the action and staying for the camp laughs. ![]()
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