I loved House of Flying Daggers, Crouching Tiger and Red Cliff, but unfortunately Hua Mulan does not join the ranks of those films... not even close.
The film opens with the most bizarre shot, a man in a Chinese army camp who clearly wasn't Chinese. I had to tell myself that this was indeed an oriental picture... yet as infrequent as this man appears, he isn't explained. I had to research a man called Vitas, a Russian pop singer who guest stars in Hua Mulan, having helped promote the film.............
What?
I shouldn't go on about him, but he's really distracting! The film does have decent production value, and (otherwise!) decent casting, so everything locks up whenever he appears.
But the nail in this film's coffin unfortunately is the pacing. We are given ten minutes of scattershot backstory for our heroine; a mash of flashbacks and lazy editing, giving no sense of humanity to the character as she's thrown into the military.
Once there, the film attempts to form relationships around her, but the writing is so heavy that none of the dialogue feels genuine, there was little chemistry. Ultimately events feel forced and contrived having been given little context or narrative foundation, making for the often flashy combat scenes feel quite unsatisfying.
A very poor screenplay and shoddy editing cannot be saved by decent battle scenes, and so I recommend Disney's vision any day!
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