Reviews

Taylor Sheridan credits Cormack McCarthy as a huge influence, and this show reeks of it. So while the cinematography and acting are excellent, it cannot redeem the underlying horrible and nihilistic message. Sure, the author plants one McCarthy-like speech by The Mother in the midst of all the butchery and bone smashing, that seems to say "Hey I don't really mean that violence rules the world of men and nature (except I do) I'm so much deeper!" I can imagine tons of teenage boys really getting off on this well packaged crap. For my part, I grew intensely weary of all the gore, and just watched to see if it was really going to end as predictably as I feared. It did.

This is truly an addictive show. Great scenes, costumes and the acting is excellent. But oh those captions! I started to write them down because they were so incongruous. I was laughing as I watched; which can really undercut the drama quite a bit. Let's set the scene...I am no expert on Chinese history, but I estimate it takes place at least 350 years ago. There are no cars, only horses. There are no guns, only swords and bows and arrows. The soldiers wear leather armor with a bit of chain link. But first gaff: we have two toughened soldiers who say to each other "Hey, let's get hammered!" then further down the line, one royal says to the other "You're trying to piss me off!" A few episodes on, one royal abases himself to the another and says "I'm just a jerk!" More: A lady in waiting screams and faints and someone reports back that "she freaked out." A lady in waiting spills a crucial bit of secret information and comes crying to her mistress weeping "My bad!" Other than that, its one cliffhanger after another, lots of intrigue and backstabbing (frontal as well) the servants are humble and slightly hysterical all the time, and the villains are just SO villainous! The thing that really keeps it happening is the chemistry between the two leads. They are so good that I actually cared for what would happen to them. Zhang Ziyi manages to make her character admirable and likeable, but never treacly. Of course, the hero is just SO heroic, he is hyperbolic, (I mean the guy gets stabbed a zillion times but just keeps on slaughtering the bad guys no matter how many of them there are....) but Yiwei Zhou (fascinatingly un-pretty face) injects so much gravitas into the performance that I basically just kept watching to see him. That's charisma.

Sit back and enjoy the ride. And on occasion suppress a chuckle over those captions.