To save her ailing father from serving in the Imperial Army, a fearless young woman disguises herself as a man to battle northern invaders in
Director: Niki Caro
Cast: Liu Yifei, Donnie Yen, Tzi Ma, Jason Scott Lee, Yoson An, Ron Yuan, Gong Li, Jet Li
Release Date:
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence
Runtime: 1 h 55 min
Review:
The live action
remake of Mulan is visually impressive in spots but ultimately it suffers from
the same issue that has plagued the other Disney remakes, it feels perfunctory
and soulless. Niki Caro does fare better
with this film than some of the other directors tasked with these cash grabs. Caro has a clear eye for sweeping visual and she
takes full advantage of their filming locations. I’d assume that’s where the majority of the
film’s massive budget was spent. The
strange thing is that sequences vary from realistically epic to overly
artificial with an over reliance on CGI, so much so that some scenes are
jarringly choppy. Caro can’t seem to
decide if she wants to keep the film grounded or go full on fantasy, so she
straddles the line between both leaving the film with an uneven tone. The script doesn’t help matters since it
keeps everything overly self serious with no tangible sense of fun. The cast is consistently wooden and
emotionally detached from their characters with only Gong Liz and Tzi Ma
leaving any sort of impact. Liu Yifei
does what she can in the lead role but she’s never engaging enough to make the
audience care about the character’s journey. This might be a bit easier to forgive if you
just ignore the fact that there is a superior version of the same story available. Only a few moments really land the way they
were intended, which is a shame because you get the feeling that there was a
better version of this film in there somewhere.
C
