Lavish wuxia adaptation of Hamlet that never arrives at a movie worth its set design. The stranglehold edgy melodrama had on the mid 00s is fully on display, with gore, sexual assault, and general cruelty substituting for interesting characterization. As expected the fight scenes are the highlight, with the opening melee at a remote drama monastery (?) setting a high bar that is never reached again. Much of the action is undercut by over eager editing that makes scenes more disorienting than exciting, but the choreography is still compelling when you can see it.

Characters are brutally flattened across the board, with Empress Wan (the Gertrude analog) getting a bizarre villain arc that is never committed to. A closing monologue attempts to make a last minute comment about patriarchal expectations, but it's fully incongruous with the rest of her character and serves no purpose but to drag the film along for another 10 minutes. The existing misogyny of Hamlet is amplified across the board, Qing (the pseudo-Ophelia) bearing the brunt of it along with Wan's reverse Oedipus complex throwing some extra incest into the mix. The actual internal conflict that is the entire focus of the play is gone, replaced with a straightforward revenge quest that's complicated only in its superfluous mechanics. If it wasn't so dull the depravity would be hilarious but I was barely hanging on.

I'm extremely unfamiliar with wuxia so perhaps if you have a better idea what to expect going in you'll be able to appreciate the costumes and sets, tuning back in occasionally to watch Hamlet fight 30 guys with a chain sword and then leaving while an hour of bad court politics plays out.

Content warnings: gore, sexual assault, incest, torture