Yen Feier (the beautiful Kelly Chan) is the empress of the title, who finds herself lumbered with the responsibility of ruling the Yan people following the death of her warlord father at the beginning of the film, after yet another skirmish in the interminable war with the rival Zhao kingdom. A section of the army, led by the dead king’s ambitious nephew Hu Ba, who is seething that he didn’t get the crown himself, don’t take too kindly too a female ruler, but Feier’s childhood friend and loyal vassal Muyong Xuehu (Donnie Yen) seems to be always there to protect her. That is until Hu Ba hatches a plot to kill the empress, sending assassins armed with poisoned darts to ambush her in an impressively filmed chase sequence.

Left for dead Feier is found and nursed to health by Duan Lanquan (played by Chinese heartthrob and Pop star Leon Lai), a doctor who lives in seclusion in an elaborate forest treehouse, where he pursues his dream of constructing a hot air balloon that will allow him to fly. Feier inevitably falls for her saviour and takes his words of pacifism to heart, so that when she finally returns to her kingdom she is able to end the spiral of revenge that has fuelled the war with the Zhao kingdom and broker a lasting peace.

This achieved, she decides to abdicate so that she can go and live the simple life with Duan in the forest, a project that is obviously doomed to tragedy as Hu Ba takes the opportunity to stage a coup and seize the throne in her absence. Consequently Feier is forced to choose between her own personal happiness with Duan, or returning to protect her people and save them from suffering. This choice between the personal and the social has been a key driving force of mainland Chinese cinema for many years (for instance it is the key plot element of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, though interestingly both films take a very different stance on the issue). The prevalence of this theme is no doubt in part a result of the legacy of communist ideology in the culture, but has become a particularly potent theme given the nation’s recent entrance into global politics and rapid industrialisation. In this sense Duan’s character, sage-like and Confucian in his world view, may represent a kind of idealised sense of Chineseness that audiences are turning towards to escape from the soaring skyscrapers of new Shanghai.

But there’s plenty on offer for foreign audiences too. An Empress and the Warriors (out now from Cine Asia) possesses the scope and high production values of epics like Zhang Yimou’s Hero and Feng Zhougang’s The Banquet, but in its breathless pacing and outlandish set pieces (the tree house fight in particular is amazing) it embodies the charm of the Hong Kong cinema of the eighties. Indeed, there’s something of the spirit of vintage John Woo in the film’s combination of soaring melodrama, honourable sacrifice and utterly ravishing, lyrical action. It is on this last point that the film excels. To say that the action is brilliantly choreographed would be an understatement, as it demonstrates such a lucid sense of precision in its editing that the overall effect is mesmerising. Although this tightness of control doesn’t really continue into the film’s melodrama, meaning that general audiences may find certain elements of the plot overwrought and sentimental, fans of vintage Chinese cinema will never-the-less find much to marvel at here.

Words > Andrew Wensum