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Review: White Vengeance (鴻門宴傳奇) (2011)
Uhhhh so this movie was a mess. I'm only vaguely familiar with the story of Hong Men Yan/Feast at Hong Gate, but even for those who are familiar with the story (the average Chinese viewer), this was a really messy movie.
Would not recommend, even if you do know the story. Even though the movie looked expensive, the script and story writing were clumsy and even cringe at times.
Spoilers.
Story
Though the movie in Chinese directly referenced Hong Men Yan, the story of the movie covered events before and far after as well. The actual feast was surprisingly short, which I was disappointed about.
The movie started with backstory, but it kind of started in a disappointing spot. Nevertheless, it finally settled into a groove in which we were to understand that Xiang Yu and Liu Bang were comrades, but that they would be diverging.
The feast at Hong Gate was an event in which Liu Bang had to recognize his subservience to Xiang Yu. But after surviving it, he nonetheless took down Xiang Yu, and his beloved Consort Yu committed suicide to die with him.
The pacing of the movie was just incredibly rushed. I understand the need to include everything that happened because frankly all of Chinese history always involves a million moving parts. But in this case, given the limited run time of the movie and that the name of the movie was the Feast at Hong Gate specifically, and the assumption that most Chinese people would know the story anyway, I thought it would have been reasonable to cut out a lot of things or to just tone down the focus.
There was a lot of telling not showing in this movie. Liu Bang's comrades were angry at him for being so subservient to Xiang Yu and he was swayed to take Xianyang after a single conversation. When they got to Xianyang, everybody went "yeah!! we're in Xianyang now!!" Again, cringe. A lot of dialogue was just so straightforward and unnecessary.
So many scenes of people making Liu Bang do something to show his loyalty or his sincerity and then getting laughed at. Not that there's a problem with showing Liu Bang as a subservient man because that's kind of one of the points of the feast, but the way it's revealed is very anticlimactics. You made him do this and now you're telling me you were just kidding? Also kind of invalidates Liu Bang's authority because though he is a leader, he is falling for the whims of others so easily.
The almost love triangle between Liu Bang, Xiang Yu, and Consort Yu was extremely unnecessary and actually made Consort Yu's death scene feel cheaper. The whole thing about Consort Yu was her loyalty to Xiang Yu. Perhaps Liu Bang's behaviour towards her could be seen as platonic and just caring for another human. But...it didn't totally feel that way. The first time they met, they had a sort-of meet cute where Liu Bang picked up her handkerchief and it was kind of a surprise later when she'd decided to go with Xiang Yu. If her love was meant to be so sacred I think even Liu Bang, the way he was portrayed here, would have respected and understood that when she was in his care. And we would not have had that brief 'dead bedroom' scene.
The fact that so much screen time was given to Fan Zeng and Zhang Liang was a little odd. I'm still not really sure of what the movie was trying to do with it. Historically they were supposed to be friends and so the conflict between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang would have been troubling to them. In the movie, Zhang Liang was revealed to be the last man standing. Sort of. Because Liu Bang was shown to be this sort of weary man who couldn't trust a single person, not even his family. Zhang Liang had become kind of a hermit. And at the end of the movie, he said that he would find someone to play go with again. It was just kind of confusing to me. Are we meant to interpret Zhang Liang as the strategist for the entire conflict between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu? Possibly, possibly not. Probably not the latter since he came after Liu Bang already arrived at Xianyang. My thinking is that if the movie wanted to show Zhang Liang as the last man standing in a terrible war, there didn't need to have that much focus on his friendship with Fan Zeng because it made him seem like he had a bigger part than he was. He was just one of the many involved, and though he was smart, he wasn't the sole strategist. Him being an everyman in Liu Bang's team would have had a greater impact of showing how bloody the conflict was. Hope that makes sense.
Anyway, the story and writing was the biggest problem in this movie.
Production
The production value was high. Not the greatest colour palette, but at least the clothes looked expensive.
The acting was...meh. I know the script didn't give the actors much to work with but absolutely nobody wowed me in this tire fire of a movie.
Characters
As I mentioned, this story just involves a lot of people so it would be natural that there would be a lot of characters that would naturally need to be there. But the way they were introduced and used were just so messy.
For Liu Bang, Xiao He was kind of his regular right-hand man, Fan Kuai was the rash one, Zhang Liang was the hip new strategist, and Han Xin was the fighter.
For Xiang Yu, Fan Zeng was his strategist and Xiang Bo ws one of his fighters (who I barely knew existed because he barely had an impact on the story), and Consort Yu.
There was just so much going on that it was hard to show how each of these characters was important. They only mean something to the audience because the audience by and large already knows who these people are. For those who don't know, it's really hard to keep track of.
If I had the task of putting this entire story in the span of a movie, I'd definitely move the focus onto the relationship between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. I would have Liu Bang and Xiang Yu have a lot more agency; they could take suggestions from their advisors (to show what kind of people each of the advisors are) but I think it would just be a lot cleaner to have Liu Bang and Xiang Yu very confident in calling their shots. In the context of this story, there just isn't time to go through the detailed personalities of the advisors (or even Consort Yu).
Overall
Oof, what a mess. Lots of money but bad movie.
Would not recommend, even if you do know the story. Even though the movie looked expensive, the script and story writing were clumsy and even cringe at times.
Spoilers.
Story
Though the movie in Chinese directly referenced Hong Men Yan, the story of the movie covered events before and far after as well. The actual feast was surprisingly short, which I was disappointed about.
The movie started with backstory, but it kind of started in a disappointing spot. Nevertheless, it finally settled into a groove in which we were to understand that Xiang Yu and Liu Bang were comrades, but that they would be diverging.
The feast at Hong Gate was an event in which Liu Bang had to recognize his subservience to Xiang Yu. But after surviving it, he nonetheless took down Xiang Yu, and his beloved Consort Yu committed suicide to die with him.
The pacing of the movie was just incredibly rushed. I understand the need to include everything that happened because frankly all of Chinese history always involves a million moving parts. But in this case, given the limited run time of the movie and that the name of the movie was the Feast at Hong Gate specifically, and the assumption that most Chinese people would know the story anyway, I thought it would have been reasonable to cut out a lot of things or to just tone down the focus.
There was a lot of telling not showing in this movie. Liu Bang's comrades were angry at him for being so subservient to Xiang Yu and he was swayed to take Xianyang after a single conversation. When they got to Xianyang, everybody went "yeah!! we're in Xianyang now!!" Again, cringe. A lot of dialogue was just so straightforward and unnecessary.
So many scenes of people making Liu Bang do something to show his loyalty or his sincerity and then getting laughed at. Not that there's a problem with showing Liu Bang as a subservient man because that's kind of one of the points of the feast, but the way it's revealed is very anticlimactics. You made him do this and now you're telling me you were just kidding? Also kind of invalidates Liu Bang's authority because though he is a leader, he is falling for the whims of others so easily.
The almost love triangle between Liu Bang, Xiang Yu, and Consort Yu was extremely unnecessary and actually made Consort Yu's death scene feel cheaper. The whole thing about Consort Yu was her loyalty to Xiang Yu. Perhaps Liu Bang's behaviour towards her could be seen as platonic and just caring for another human. But...it didn't totally feel that way. The first time they met, they had a sort-of meet cute where Liu Bang picked up her handkerchief and it was kind of a surprise later when she'd decided to go with Xiang Yu. If her love was meant to be so sacred I think even Liu Bang, the way he was portrayed here, would have respected and understood that when she was in his care. And we would not have had that brief 'dead bedroom' scene.
The fact that so much screen time was given to Fan Zeng and Zhang Liang was a little odd. I'm still not really sure of what the movie was trying to do with it. Historically they were supposed to be friends and so the conflict between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang would have been troubling to them. In the movie, Zhang Liang was revealed to be the last man standing. Sort of. Because Liu Bang was shown to be this sort of weary man who couldn't trust a single person, not even his family. Zhang Liang had become kind of a hermit. And at the end of the movie, he said that he would find someone to play go with again. It was just kind of confusing to me. Are we meant to interpret Zhang Liang as the strategist for the entire conflict between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu? Possibly, possibly not. Probably not the latter since he came after Liu Bang already arrived at Xianyang. My thinking is that if the movie wanted to show Zhang Liang as the last man standing in a terrible war, there didn't need to have that much focus on his friendship with Fan Zeng because it made him seem like he had a bigger part than he was. He was just one of the many involved, and though he was smart, he wasn't the sole strategist. Him being an everyman in Liu Bang's team would have had a greater impact of showing how bloody the conflict was. Hope that makes sense.
Anyway, the story and writing was the biggest problem in this movie.
Production
The production value was high. Not the greatest colour palette, but at least the clothes looked expensive.
The acting was...meh. I know the script didn't give the actors much to work with but absolutely nobody wowed me in this tire fire of a movie.
Characters
As I mentioned, this story just involves a lot of people so it would be natural that there would be a lot of characters that would naturally need to be there. But the way they were introduced and used were just so messy.
For Liu Bang, Xiao He was kind of his regular right-hand man, Fan Kuai was the rash one, Zhang Liang was the hip new strategist, and Han Xin was the fighter.
For Xiang Yu, Fan Zeng was his strategist and Xiang Bo ws one of his fighters (who I barely knew existed because he barely had an impact on the story), and Consort Yu.
There was just so much going on that it was hard to show how each of these characters was important. They only mean something to the audience because the audience by and large already knows who these people are. For those who don't know, it's really hard to keep track of.
If I had the task of putting this entire story in the span of a movie, I'd definitely move the focus onto the relationship between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. I would have Liu Bang and Xiang Yu have a lot more agency; they could take suggestions from their advisors (to show what kind of people each of the advisors are) but I think it would just be a lot cleaner to have Liu Bang and Xiang Yu very confident in calling their shots. In the context of this story, there just isn't time to go through the detailed personalities of the advisors (or even Consort Yu).
Overall
Oof, what a mess. Lots of money but bad movie.