The plot for this film is very odd. A king who holds sway over his city kingdom of Pei by virtue of an alliance with rival Yang Cang (Jun Hu), stands in opposition to virtually every member of his inner council, who want to wage war and and take back the city for themselves. Yet a plan is set in motion for just that very consequence, as a result of behind the scene machinations that involve a commoner who steps in to take the place of the king's commander (Chao Deng in a dual role), and challenge the authority of Yang Cang. Admittedly, the story may be somewhat hard to follow, the near total black and white rendition of the picture getting even murkier in the rain drenched fighting sequences of Jing City. I have to say, it was a trailer for the picture that brought me to it, as it's hard to resist the intrigue of those swirling sword umbrellas, which you don't get the full flavor of until seeing how they're deployed as weapons against Yang. The scenes of violence do feature splashes of blood red to heighten the extremes of brutal warfare, even as traditional martial arts sequences are under utilized. The finale itself involves a couple of twists, though I was puzzled by Jing Zhao's placing a sword in the hand of the dead king, as if to suggest that the king took his own life, only to be countermanded by Jing's proclamation that he had killed the king's assassin.

So this is called shadow, but seeing Ying as its original title on imdb I had to go with the balance to it. And you could say this is quite balanced. It is also something you might and would expect from the director himself. The fighting, the choreography, the wardrobe - everything is on a top level and should be more than satisfactory.

Some might feel though that previous movies of his had more substance. As it is though the movie is more than just its style. The story is decent enough if easy to follow. Emjoyable and entertaining, what more can you wish for?

SHADOW is the latest movie from acclaimed director Zhang Yimou, but unfortunately a big step down from THE GREAT WALL - which was in itself a step down from the days of HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS and CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. Yimou is well known for his intense colour palettes and his beautiful cinematography, so why he chose to make a horrid-looking digital movie, all greyed out like so many others before it, is beyond me. The story is slow and drawn out to the point of tedium, with three kingdoms-era plotting between myriad characters, none of whom are interesting. This is probably the most mainland Chinese-feeling film I've seen in a while, and that's not a good thing. There's some fun but brief battle action with fun super-killing weapon umbrellas and a twist-upon-twist ending straight out of Shakespeare, but otherwise this one's a lame duck.