Holy cow -- Warriors Of Heaven And Earth is a sprawling epic Western, except that it's set in China in the beginning of the 8th century.

The story centres around two men, one of whom is a fugitive soldier (Jiang Wen) charged with disobeying orders when he refused to kill Turkish women and children. The other man (Nakai Kiichi) is the Imperial soldier sent to hunt the renegade soldier down.

While these two are determined to fight each other to the death -- eventually -- they must first join forces to help guard a camel caravan moving along the Silk Road to the Gobi desert and on to the emperor. The caravan includes a young monk and an important Buddhist relic that just happens to have supernatural powers. Further complicating matters is the fact that the Imperial soldier is also protecting a woman (Zhao Wei) and accompanying her to the capital.

(If nothing else, this permits Warriors Of Heaven And Earth to have the two biggest stars in mainland China in the cast.)

At any rate, the guys and their loyal soldiers must contend with marauding bands of bandits and Turks and such forces of nature as sand storms and drought.

There are extraordinary battle scenes in this film. The hand to hand combat involves swordplay and balletic marital arts moves. There are enough scenes of hacking and bloodletting to get an 18A rating. Each time the bandits attack the caravan, there is plenty of stabbing and slashing and runnings-through, with swords clanging and horses crashing around. The choreography is impressive.

Some people die in slow motion. Their last observations are generally of the bloody chaos around them, and the action is riveting. Things get particularly wild in a sequence involving the attack on a fortress; history buffs will love that part.

In Warriors Of Heaven And Earth, China sometimes looks like the American West, or like the surface of the moon. The cinematography (from Zhao Fei) is breathtaking, and for all the violence, it's an amazing movie to look at.

What we have here are quiet philosophy and ferocious battles, without much of anything else in between. Warriors Of Heaven And Earth is in Mandarin with English subtitles.

(This film is rated 18-A)

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