For example, I learn from the press notes, no foreign family - even a Chinese family from overseas - would be allowed to live with a local family. "A Great Wall" is billed as the first American movie made in China, and it was directed by Peter Wang (who also plays the lead) and produced by Shirley Sun, a San Francisco documentary filmmaker.Īlthough they were allowed the freedom to shoot on location, their film has not yet been shown widely in China, apparently because it shows the visiting Fangs violating some official guidelines. I suppose I knew intellectually that the capital of the largest nation on Earth would have high-rises, but somehow my mental picture of Peking had lots of pagodas and rickshas in it. There is no attempt to turn the film into a travelogue, with montages of scenic China, but of course we do get a glimpse of the Great Wall and another glimpse, which for me was more startling, of expressway traffic speeding past the high-rises of downtown Peking. The movie unfolds almost slyly, setting up situations in which the Americans and the Chinese discover things about each other.
"Haven't you ever heard of privacy here?" he asks, but apparently they have not. In particular, he can't believe that the Chaos open all of their children's mail before handing it to them. Life is crowded but low-key, and Paul Fang, their son, is astonished by the lives of his teenage cousins. Once they're in China, the Fangs decide to live with the Chaos instead of in one of the big tourist hotels. We see Fang engaged in a showdown with his boss at work, and then we see Chao in his tiny garden, performing his morning tai chi ritual, which climaxes in a highly satisfactory burst of flatulence. Chao is Leo Fang's sister, and they've been corresponding for 30 years. It works well enough as an action-adventure romp, too, despite its simplistic plotting.The film opens by cutting between vignettes of the daily lives of the Fangs in California and the Chaos in Peking. From its swooping, acrobatic camerawork, to the fight scenes unfolding in eye-popping 3D, it’s easy to see where the money has been spent. With a budget of £120m, the English-language debut from Chinese director Zhang Yimou ( House of Flying Daggers, Hero) is the most expensive China-US co-production to date. However, though both are dab hands with a bow, the two fight for different reasons he for food and money, she for trust and honour, a lesson William inevitably learns by the film’s conclusion (perhaps making an oversimplified case for Chinese communism).ĭamon and Pascal are less white saviour figures than they are an entry point for western audiences, presumably cast in an attempt to maximise the crossover between Hollywood and Chinese blockbuster markets. The order are preparing to battle the mythical Tao-Tie – giant, green, lizard-y looking monsters that are resurrected every 60 years to teach the Chinese a lesson about unchecked greed and swarm the wall in their millions.Ĭommander Lin (the film’s sole speaking female character, played by Jing Tian) takes a shine to William, pointing out their similarities. O n the hunt for precious “black powder”, rogue mercenaries William Garin (a grizzled-looking Matt Damon) and Pero Tovar ( Game of Thrones’s Pedro Pascal) are captured by The Nameless Order, an ancient military operation occupying the Great Wall of China.
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