Shadow Warrior

Shadow (2019) is the latest from Zheng Yimou, of Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower (which I definitely saw but maybe didn’t blog?). He also made The Great Wall, which I did blog, but let’s ignore that.

In ancient China, two kingdoms are fighting over a city (actually, they may be hostile allies, but never mind). The city is held by King Yang Cang, and the weak-willed King Pei is willing to let him hold it. But Pei’s commander Ziyu (Deng Chao) has challenged Yang to a duel for the city, so Pei busts him down to commoner.

But Ziyu isn’t really Ziyu - he is a “shadow” commoner, raised to be a stand-in for the commander. The real Ziyu (also played by Deng Chao) is wounded and crazed. He plans for his shadow to use the metal bladed umbrella weapon of Pei to win the duel. The shadow doesn’t do too well until Ziyu’s wife, Xiao Ai (Sun Li), shows him how to use a flowing, feminine style.

Meanwhile, King Pei is trying to marry his sister (who seems a lot smarter than he is) to Yang Cang’s son. Yang counters with an insulting offer to make her his son’s concubine. To everyone’s disgust, he accepts. He is just trying to keep out of wars, people!

Like Hero, this is a very color-coded movie, but the colors are all black, white, and grey. Men and women wear clothes with ink painting designs, and the practice floor is a giant yin/yang mosaic. But I don’t think it represents good/evil. Possibly male/female, active/passive, and so forth. Shadow and light.

There are also some very wild Chinese zither duets (guqin and guzheng?) if you like that kind of thing - I do. Remember the fight at the temple in the rain in Hero?

But I am sorry to say that there are not as many action scenes as I would have liked, and they are not that great. The metal umbrellas were kind of silly (like in a lot of these movies). Combined with a restrained color palette and somewhat talky script, the lack of action sort of killed this for me. I didn’t hate it, but wasn’t enraptured. Maybe Zhang isn’t really meant to direct action movies - a lot of his movies seem to be romances and dramas. Maybe he does them better. I might never find out, because I like action movie better.