Ye Yan (in English,
The Banquet) is a 2006 Chinese wuxia movie loosely based on
Hamlet. Released in the U.S. under the more Crouching Tiger-ish title
Legend of the Black Scorpion, it tells the story of Crown Prince Wu Luan's struggles in the royal court after the death of his father, the Emperor, and the assumption of the throne by his uncle Li. Li also marries Wu Luan's stepmother Wan, who is a contemporary with Wu Luan and was in love with him (and may still be). Wu Luan comes to realize that there is treachery and intrigue at work in the royal court and within his family, and decides to seek his revenge. What cost that revenge might take from others, such as the loyal Yin family and their daughter Qing Nu who is also in love with Wu Luan, is not his concern.
Director Feng Xiaogang creates several beautiful scenes throughout much of
The Banquet, but relies too heavily on music-video level imagery that's supposed to be Important and Mean Something, but is too often stagey and boring. Ge You as the Emperor Li and Zhou Xun as Qing Nu are highly watchable as a treacherous man who can't believe his own betrayal and a young woman far too moral to survive the immorality of the court, and Ziyi Zhang is excellent as the prideful and conflicted Empress Wan, but Daniel Wu lends no energy to
The Banquet's often plodding pace as Wu Luan and his blank performance can't keep the movie from drowning in its director's pretensions.
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Arn: The Knight Templar began life as a two-movie adaptation of a trilogy of Swedish historical fiction novels in 2007 and 2008, which were combined for an international release under the title of the first movie. Online writeups seem to suggest that the longer version of the story is a better one, and the combined version does seem to be kind of episodic and choppy. Arn Magnusson (Joakim Nätterqvist) is a young boy raised in a monastery who leaves upon adulthood to rejoin his family. Back home, he demonstrates the fightng skill he learned from a monk who had formerly been a knight and he falls in love with Cecilia Algotsdotter (Sofia Helin). Their affair results in Cecilia's pregnancy, which combines with political intrigue among the Magnusson and Algotsdotter families to get Arn sent to the Holy Land as a Knight Templar and Cecilia to a convent, each to serve 20 years of penance. Arn endures the brutal Palestinian desert, combat against the wily Saladin and the thick-headedness of his own Templar superiors to become a hardened warrior. He returns to take Cecilia as his wife after her own 20 years of humiliation and punishment in the convent, and they found an estate that soon becomes a power player in early Swedish politics.
Nätterqvist and Helin are both convincing as young lovers who reunite seasoned by their experiences, and director Peter Flinth spares little expense with his continent-sprawling story. But he's an unimaginative storyteller overall -- when a character talks about something happening at the next full moon, lo and behold we switch to a shot of the waxing moon -- and doesn't really justify some of the interestingly modern behavior and viewpoints of his 12th century characters. Again, it may be fairer to judge the extended original product to get a clearer picture of Arn the Knight Templar; the shorter version of the movie
Arn: The Knight Templar doesn't really offer one.
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Aamir Khan is one of India's top actors and Kajol Devgan (usually billed as Kajol) one of its top actresses. Their chemistry is a large part of the reason 2006's
Fanaa succeeds as a story despite its storyline's outlandish coincidences. Zooni Ali Beg (Kajol), a blind girl from Kashmir, meets a ladykiller-styled tour guide named Rehan Khan (Aamir Khan) while on a trip to New Delhi. They begin a relationship that seems destined for a lifetime of happiness as Rehan talks Khan into surgery to restore her sight. But events separate them, and their reunion years later places them both in the middle of a nuclear terror plot that could endanger millions.
Again, the story relies on wild coincidences and some pretty out-there plot twists. But both leads manage to sell these implausibilities as they tell the story of people who sometimes have to choose between "the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils," as one character says in the movie. Director Kunal Kohli wisely hangs back and gives them the space to do so, relegating the eye-roll factor in the plot mostly to the background.
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