9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
very good film; the only flaw somewhat corny music;, May 27, 1999
By A Customer
I loved this film; however, initially I found the music to be unpleasently distracting: ill suited (using a cliched idiom of contemporary action film) to the time and place of the story. Whether or not the depiction of the cultures involved is fairly accurate or not (one would guess that it must be romanticized at least a little...but literature entertains by interpretation and distortion of "the real world")is beyond my judgment; what is important is that the film manages to compel belief that one has entered medieval central asia: a place of pageantry, brutality, honor, beauty, hardship ....and co-mingling of many cultures of east and west. The story is haunting and introduces the audience to an unsolved historical mystery: the long forgotten intentionally hidden trove of priceless artifacts and manuscripts unearthed at Tun Huang.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EPIC, July 5, 2003
This is a great movie, in my opinion, an epic.
The technical aspects (cinematography, etc) were
top notch, the acting very realistic, and the story
Shakespearean.
Great quotes I will use as my own later, like:
"You have no treasure here; your scrolls and books
are just paper to you."
"Killing the wounded is a kindness; who wants a soldier
who wants to die."
"The powerful survive, but to survive we have to fight.
We survived, but what have we gained?:
Subtitles do NOT get in the way to the movie's impact;
LOTS of action, but it helps not to be dim witted.
Bill Schaefer
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