海角大神

鈥淭he Great Wall,鈥� starring Matt Damon, is the first major Chinese-Hollywood co-production and also the first predominantly English language movie from Zhang Yimou. Once upon a time, Zhang was the director of such humanist near-masterpieces as 鈥淩aise the Red Lantern鈥� and 鈥淭he Story of Qiu Ju,鈥� but in the past decades, his work has become, for the most part, increasingly shrill and emptily spectacular. It鈥檚 as if the Chinese Vittorio De Sica had somehow morphed into China鈥檚 Cecil B. DeMille. It made perfect sense that the Chinese government, with which he is currently back in favor, would have picked him to stage the ceremonies for the 2008 Olympic Games.

鈥淭he Great Wall鈥� may be DeMille-like, but it鈥檚 a lot closer to 鈥淕odzilla鈥� than 鈥淭he Ten Commandments.鈥� Instead of the Red Sea, we have a sea of giant, ravenous lizards, the Taotie, that show up every sixty years to storm the Great Wall and gobble up everything and everybody in sight.

Into this mess strides William Garin (Damon), who, along with his fellow mercenary, Tovar (Pedro Pascal of 鈥淕ame of Thrones鈥�), is captured by a militia guarding a main outpost along the Great Wall. William, as we see early on, has already bested one of the beasts and so, when the big onslaught ensues right on its 60-year schedule, he is impressed into service guarding the fortress. With great aplomb, he slices and dices the monsters. Nevertheless, they just keep coming.

I had my fill of these things long before William does. If you鈥檝e seen one Taotie, you鈥檝e seen them all. Zhang does an impressive job of staging the battles, and there are stray moments when the movie recalls John Huston鈥檚 鈥淭he Man Who Would Be King鈥� and other tall tales of Westerners confronting the exotic Other. But there is barely a whiff of genuine transcendence in this grand-scale extravaganza. The special effects are courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, but the magic here is largely industrial. Grade:聽C+ (Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy action violence.)