Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Galling, already the blockbuster of the year? (critical)

The new Tsui Hark is a great spectacularly romantic and political fresco.

Last week came out Creation of the Gods 2: Demon Force. This week it’s Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants arriving. Two grandiose Chinese blockbusters who seem to tell the same thing – the fight of two opposite forces for the conquest of a given territory – and yet it is really two rooms, two atmospheres. Creation of the Gods looks like a Stormriders New generation with its SFX in Gogo, and its fights between Immortals Taoists and Half-Dieux Surgered with the sketchbook of Masashi Kishimoto. Condor Heroes is much more earth-to-earth, even if there is no shortage of power and air fights. We are in China, a thousand years ago, in the heart of a conflict between two clans, those of the steppe and those of the plain (the Mongols and the Jin dynasty, basically). Born among the Jin but raised among Mongols, our hero Huo Jing (the Chinese pop superstar Xiao Zhan) tries to live his love story with Huang Rong (Zuhang Dafei), guardian of a sacred martial arts treaty that the evil venom of the West wants (the immense Tony Leung Ka-Fai)…

So Condor Heroes Carbide in romance, love, attraction and repulsion between its contrary forces. The film scrolls through the places, the battles and the years (the film is adapted from a classic novel by Louis Cha, many times adapted on large and small screen), sometimes approaching the crash by dint of making loopings in rase-blog (why make flashbacks on scenes literally ten minutes before?). But what a magnitude of crazy, what a mastery on the part of Tsui Hark, even in its most breaked moments. Funny, since last year, we discovered in French theaters The legend of the hero hunter eagle (1993), parody of the same novel by Louis Cha, turned during the endless shooting of Ashes of Wong Kar-Wai time with the same team. A big kung-fu 90s comedy, not very subtle but very funny. Obviously, Condor Heroes is far from this parody, as well as the meteoric experimentation of his Seven Swords (Bigre, twenty years old already), but no trace of aseptization here.

The fear was legitimate: the previous patriotic blockbuster of Tsui Hark (The battle of Lake Changjin In two parts, co-directed with Dante Lam and Chen Kaige) was crushed by his status of order of order from the Chinese government (when he had managed to hack The Battle of the Tiger Mountain in 2014). Production officially approved by the authorities, Condor Heroes Do not seem to want to sell anything. Neither country nor program. But just like in the splendid trilogy Detective Deethe apparent malice and the pure pleasure caused by the fight scenes never obscure the political horizon of the film, where the heroes fight to avoid a great war and refuse the vain glory caused by the massacres. SO, Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallingthe blockbuster of the year? Come on, we are only in March.