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The year is 221 B.C. and China is not yet united - but Ying Zheng, King of
Qin, is doing everything to unite the 7 kingdoms of China to one giant empire -
even if that means leading long wars & having to fight opposition back at
his own court - including that of his prime minister Lu Buwei (Chen Kaige), the
cunning Marquis (Wang Zhiwen), & even the queenmother (Gu Yongfei), who is
not of Qin origin but from the kingdom Zhao ... However, with his fiancée
Lady Zhao, who is impressed by his plans to unify & pacify (as he calls it)
the land, the king seems to have a valuable ally, as she makes up a cunning
plan to convince the prince of Yan (Sun Zhou) to hand over his kingdom to Ying
Zheng without any bloodletting - which involves her being branded (& I
mean, really branded) as a traitor & being kicked out of the Qin kingdom,
only to seemingly become an ally of the prince of Yan & persuade him to
send an assassin to kill Ying Zheng ... whom Ying Zheng, knowing of this plan,
will of course kill ... & to not lose face the prince will have to hand
over his land. Of course, nothing turns out as planned, when the killer Lady
Zhao planned to hire, Jing Ke (Zhang Fengyi) proves to have left his former
life as an assassin behind him after he couldn't kill a blind girl (Zhou Xun)
whose family he had just killed even though she wanted to kill him. Instead he
plans to become a peaceful farmer, & when Lady Zhao tries to persuade him
with her charms, she instead falls in love with him (& he with her by the
way) ... Ying Zheng's court meanwhile has turned into a bloodbath when the
Marquis starts a rebellion but is defeated when his rebels face tenfolds the
soldiers of Ying Zheng. But it also turns out the Marquis was the secret
longtime lover of the Queen mother & even had 2 kids with her. Enraged over
this fact, Ying Zheng orders the kids to be killed - even though they are his
half brothers. But before he can kill the Marquis too, he receives another
blow, when the Marquis tells him he is not even of Qin origin - meaning the son
of the old Qin-king - but the son of his prime-minister Lu Buwei, who himself
was of Zhao origin. & when he can finally come to terms with his real
father, the man, disgusted by his son's deeds, hangs himself. That drives Ying
Zheng over the edge far enough to brutally & violently conquer Zhao, &
even kill the innocent children of the kingdom who just survived the ordeal by
burying them alive. Lady Zhao, who desperately wanted to save her homeland
& planned to talk Ying Zheng out of his most brutal conquest, unfortunately
comes to late & only finds bloodshed & corpses ... & it is only now
that Jing Ke, to exorcise himself of his own demon, is convinced it is right to
assassinate Ying Zheng ... which is of course easier said than done, since Lady
Zhao - terrified by the bloodshed Ying Zheng has caused - confesses to Jing Ke
that the plan to assassinate Ying Zheng was only a plot to conquer Yan in the
first place, & the king eagerly awaits his killer. But in the finale,
Jing Ke proves to be of some resources himself when he claims to have been
forced to assassinate Ying Zheng, & almost convinces the king with his
performance of the naive wannabe assassin, even gets close enough to have the
kjing in his sword's reach ... when he realizes his sword has been broken by
Ying Zheng's guards. Furiously, Ying Zheng kills his assassin, all the more
so since Jing Ke dies with a smiling face, plus noone of the many people in the
big hall of his palace saw it fit to help their king ... The film
has some great scenes, both in the action department & on an emotional
level, & the camerawork is very inspired - the main problems though are
that the film is overly complex, having way too many subplots it tries to tie
up in the end - including some that trigger disbelief - and it's simply way too
long to tell its core-story (which is drawn attention from by the many
subplots).
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find The Emperor and the Assassin at adultvideouniverse.com
