Jackie Chan hasn't made a good, solid movie in years; though Police Story 2013 wasn't too bad. And now with the star power (and talent) of Adrien Brody and John Cusack, I had high hopes for this - or at least that it wouldn't suck. Boy, was I wrong.
I actually thought that Chan would be playing a more serious character that had less of his usual comedic antics. It certainly seemed that way when we first saw him giving orders to his men. But then, his old self came back when he had a duel with the female leader from the tribe dressed in black. Waving his arms about and ending with that accidental boob-grab gag that we've already seen a few times in his movies, or movies in general. Enough of that, please.
Most at fault here was director Daniel Lee. I've seen two of his three previous movies and he didn't impress me with Three Kingdoms: Resurrection Of The Dragon, but I thought 14 Blades had its merits. Dragon Blade has become his worst movie for me.
It didn't seem like he improved from his previous experiences. I thought he went the other way instead. Casting was one problem; while Brody looked the part of a Roman General, Cusack was nowhere resembling a Roman legion. But he did the best he could.
The middle portion of the movie went on for far too long, as if dragging a rectangular boulder across the sand like in the movie. Lee's juvenile direction made the audience suffer through inconsequential sequences that only hurt the movie as it tried to build some emotional connections with us. I couldn't care less with how the pacing kept slowing down.
I noticed that when Lee did 14 Blades with very minimum body count, he was better. Now with so many extras as the movie attempted to go for the epic feel of a war movie, Lee just couldn't deliver. And speaking of extras, why are these Chinese movies so bad at hiring or directing extras? They all really looked like extras rather than actors.
And the use of slow motion action sequences were totally inappropriate as they didn't add to the movie but only pointed out how bad those sequences were or showed how they were never thought out properly. I never once figured out what Lee was trying to show with them.
In the end when bodies began to fall, I was already bored out of my mind and couldn't care less because the emotional connection was a huge failed attempt earlier on. I only pitied Cusack and Brody for being involved in this horrible attempt at what probably looked good on paper.
Somebody needs to tell Jackie Chan that Tiberius is pronounced with an "s" at the end.
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