Word: zhao
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...denouement of the papers, when Deng decides to order martial law, occurs in a debate between him and Zhao Ziyang, the reform-minded General Secretary. "Of course we want to build a socialist democracy," Deng says. "But we can't possibly do it in a hurry, and still less do we want that Western-style stuff. If our 1 billion people jumped into multiparty elections, we'd get chaos like the 'all-out civil war' we saw during the Cultural Revolution... After thinking long and hard about this, I've concluded that we should bring in the People's Liberation...
...swift stab in the chest. Shot with the camera speeding alongside the galloping horses, this first scene promises a magnificent cinematic experience, something both visually and emotionally powerful (if bloody). What follows, however, falls disappointingly short of expectations. Though a cinematographic knock-out (kudos to director of photography Zhao Fei), this epic rendering fails to lend vibrancy to the story of the first emperor of China's rise to power. All too predictably, The Emperor and the Assassin falls prey to the temptation of presenting sumptuous costumes and cast-of-thousands battle scenes at the expense of an engaging plot...
...Ying Zheng (Li Xuejian), whose grandiose ambition to unify the states into one massive, centralized entity is both truly visionary and tragically misdirected. Though (debatably) well-intentioned, Ying Zheng resorts to more and more extreme acts of violence to achieve his goals. In protest of his increasing brutality, Lady Zhao (Gong Li), Ying Zheng's childhood friend and long-time lover, announces that she is leaving him. Ying Zheng manages to convince her that the bloodshed he has incurred is only necessary in creating a lasting period of peace--until it becomes obvious that he will spare...
Certainly, there is great potential here for a genuinely moving epic: Lady Zhao, caught between two powerful men, must choose between loyalty and justice, old love and new love; Ying Zhang and Jing Ke must decide between ambition and conscience. But though all the right ingredients are assembled, the equation somehow fails to add up. The complexity and tension inherent to the characters aren't played out to their full potential, resulting in a certain degree of dramatic sag. Without strong characterizations, the plot founders, and the focal trio is all too easily eclipsed by the bombastic military hullabaloo around...
...albeit gorgeously shot. Not even the radiant Gong Li, who too often proves the saving grace in other overly-serious cinematic efforts, is unable to rescue the titanic The Emperor and The Assassin from sinking under its own epic weight. In what should have been a stunning scene, Lady Zhao runs onto the corpse-strewn battlefield of her home-state Zhao to find the mass grave of all Zhao's children, massacred by Ying Zheng. At first incredulous, then hysterically digging up one small, blue body after another, the anguished and betrayed Lady Zhao almost gives one something to care...