The Great Wall

I am a sucker for a film with a "dumb but awesome" premise. And this one has a doozy. In China about a thousand years ago, a group of Europeans visit looking for "the black powder" (basically, gunpowder). But when they hit the Great Wall, they discover that the people of China have something more pressing - in particular, the reason the wall was built in the first place - to protect China from a vast army of lizard-creatures. Soon our heroes are joining in the fight, as the lizard creatures attacks grow increasingly dangerous....

Dumb this is, but also quite entertaining. In particular, it looks gorgeous - the various chinese warriors in their various-coloured armour (each squadron getting a different primary colour) look amazing and the finale, as the action moves to an imperial city and our heroes are fighting all over a tower, has some stunning lighting going on. The script and acting are slightly another matter - things are a little slow to get going and Matt Damon plays the western hero in a rather standard clenched-jaw hero manner (Pedro Pascal, as his slightly shiftier offsider, gets to be a whole heap more charismatic). Zhang Yimou has always had a beautiful eye and if this lacks pretty much every inch of any of the depth of, say, "Raise the Red Lantern", it does have its own uniquely wild sensibility that makes this rather enjoyable stuff.