The Great Wall

Loved it! I'm glad I read some not so glamorous reviews on this movie because it was much better than I expected.. Visually spectacular! I mean Spectacular! The Wall looked brilliant all maintained and cared for and fitted out with some ingenious weaponry. I loved the (somewhat expected) precision and unity of the Chinese fighting forces with their ingenuity of machines and some weapons I've never even seen before. Colour coded regiments with spectacular costumes, calculated use of weaponry, it was a feast for the eyes. And they left you in no doubt they meant business. Fairly simple plot easy to follow with none of those STUPID plot twists, and I kinda understood why Matt Damon's character was seemingly swayed so easily to fight for something completely different after decades of fighting for different causes and different leaders with no real sense of purpose. This was something that had real purpose to fight for. The lead female character played by Chinese actress Jing Tian is absolutely gorgeous as you'd probably expect and I thought she nailed the character spot-on as the strong, uncompromising but in the end fair General. The monsters were good and it was fun.

There is very little to recommend this film. What's surprising is a film this action-packed managed to be quite so dull and plodding. If you can't guess the plot in the first twenty minutes, it's because you've fallen asleep. I could say more, but I think I've wasted enough time on this unspectacular little film.

Visually cool and great for a mindless action flick. Very weak plot, weak characters (0 empathy developed for them), weak villain/enemy..... love the directors vision, but without some substance and story telling added to the mix, it falls a bit flat for me.