The Banquet

2006 [CHINESE]

Action / Drama / Fantasy / Romance

8
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 60% · 12 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 60% · 5K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.4/10 10 7343 7.3K

Plot summary

Crown Prince Wu Luan is in love with Little Wan but left heartbroken when she marries his father, the emperor. The emperor's brother, Li, kills him and Wu Luan tries to avenge his father's death.

Director

Xiaogang Feng Photo
Xiaogang Feng

Top cast

Ziyi Zhang Photo
Ziyi Zhang as Empress Wan
Daniel Wu Photo
Daniel Wu as Prince Wu Luan
Xun Zhou Photo
Xun Zhou as Qing Nu
Aaron C. Shang Photo
Aaron C. Shang as Jiang Lei
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1.18 GB
1280*714
Chinese 2.0
NR
Subtitles cn  
24 fps
2 hr 11 min
Seeds ...
2.42 GB
1920*1072
Chinese 5.1
NR
Subtitles cn  
24 fps
2 hr 11 min
Seeds 4

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by aristofanis 7 / 10

Some good reasons to watch this

This is a very well made production of an epic story placed in 10th century China. Magnificent scenes of ritual, majestic scenery, beautiful landscapes, great stage design, artful choreography and above all a very good sense of the theatrical that echos ancient Greek Tragedy. One thing that seems to be wearing out in Chinese movies of this kind are the long violently cruel scenes that are attempted to be beautified and the ongoing fighters who fly allover. In a choreographic sense they are of great merit but a lot is unnecessary. Zhang Ziyi is one more good reason to see this movie. I found her convincing in her role although somewhat stiff. I would like to see more of her in the future, more such great productions with even less fighting and more content that Chinese culture can easily provide.
Reviewed by david-dodd 5 / 10

Wanted To Love It, But...

I'm a big fan of Chinese movies, Ziyi Zhang and Shakespeare, so I was definitely looking forward to this movie. The story is inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet and does an excellent job of translating the classic to an historic setting at the end of the Tang dynasty. I especially enjoyed the reinterpretation of Hamlet's mother as Prince Wu Luan's former lover (there was always something uncomfortably incestuous in Shakespeare's original). The acting is superb with kudos to both Ziyi Zhang and You Ge for creating a pair of very complex characters as Empress and Emperor. Some of the dialog is poetic in spite of not being Shakespearean. The sets were sumptuous. And Qing Nu's song at the end was beautiful!So where did it go wrong? Except for Qing's song, the rest of the music was annoyingly obtrusive. Most of the action scenes were stylized and shot in slow motion. And many times the annoying music was playing during the slow motion action sequences, which effectively doubled the annoyance. Only the Prince's "audition" was a meaningful, well constructed action sequence. Finally, it could have been edited better with the movie reduced by about 15 minutes. There were several scenes that just didn't make sense. For example, there is a beautiful shot of Empress Wan entering the water naked, but it has no relation to what came before or after (ok, maybe that scene doesn't need context, but it just seemed out of place).Overall, a decent movie with flashes of brilliance but having one too many flaws to rank any higher.
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