The Great Wall
Starring global superstar Matt Damon and directed by one of the most breathtaking visual stylists of our time, Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), Legendary's The Great Wall tells the story of an elite force making a valiant stand for humanity on the world's most iconic structure. The first English-language production for Yimou is the largest film ever shot entirely in China. The Great Wall also stars Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe and Andy Lau.
24 March 1982, Taipei, Taiwan
19 December 1964, Beijing, China
19 August 1972, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
3 March 1985, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
20 December 1990, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
June 28, 1990 in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
20 April 1990, Beijing, China
6 February 1994, China
8 October 1970, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
22 July 1955, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA
13 February 1988, Shenyang, Liaoning, China
21 September 1999, China
2 March 1982, Copenhagen, Denmark
2 April 1975, Santiago, Chile
17 April 1986, Shanghai, China
7 October 1974, Kozoglu, Kelkit District, Turkey
27 September 1961, Tai Po, Hong Kong
28 June 1990, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
February 23, 2017
Its epic imagery - the rows of soldiers, the rain of spears, the surging forces - is undercut by the Saturday-matinee cheesiness of the concept.
March 04, 2017
The real stars of this film are the Chinese actors. 28-year-old Jing Tian is wonderful as a female leader within the Order who commands a strong presence.
March 13, 2017
Special effects gurus are tasked with the rescue of a plot that is set adrift with moronic simplicity.
February 17, 2017
What a bummer that all Chinese master Zhang Yimou and Hollywood star Matt Damon come up with is a B-level creature feature with delusions of grandeur.
February 17, 2017
To watch it is to be aware of how little movies this size have to do with art and how much they are product, the result of a calculation involving actorly appeal and spectacle, because spectacle, not story, has the... most universal draw.
February 19, 2017
If this is the future for motion pictures, god help us all.
February 23, 2017
Everything is competent, but rarely impressive.
February 17, 2017
As pure spectacle, The Great Wall is absolutely dazzling.
February 27, 2017
The film feels so far removed from the Zhang I have grown up respecting that it feels like it is less his film and more the product of heavy Hollywood studio influencing.
March 02, 2017
Director Zhang Yimou, the darling of art-house cinemas the world over, tries his hand at a fantasy adventure epic and achieves only low camp, albeit with his customary eye for brilliant color and striking tableaux.
April 07, 2017
The Great Wall's unevenness is never more apparent than in its proliferation of less-than-engrossing subplots...
February 24, 2017
Zhang is more interested in ceremonies than combat sequences. Ranks of soldiers in exotic uniforms march into position atop battlements, while both feast and funeral are played out as spectacles.
February 23, 2017
[At first,] we learn the Great Wall of China was originally erected to protect the Chinese from marauding forces embodying the depths of human greed. Shortly afterward, we realize The Great Wall was made for precisely opposite reasons.
March 09, 2017
As ambitious as it is flat.
March 13, 2017
Special effects gurus are tasked with the rescue of a plot that is set adrift with moronic simplicity.
March 28, 2017
Gloriously, fantastically stupid from beginning to end, Fifth Generation legend Zhang Yimou's The Great Wall is also, you know, not terrible on the grand scale of terrible things.
March 27, 2017
Zhang's moments of visual splendor-a battalion of hot-air balloonists, the queen-monster and her royal guard of fan-frilled monstrosities-are weighed down by a script and performances almost dutiful in their dullness.
April 12, 2017
The battle scenes are spectacularly choreographed, and the narrative hinges on a Westerner who shifts his own perspective from being self-centred to self-sacrificing.
February 23, 2017
Ultimately, a handful of eye-popping Yimou flourishes can't compensate for filmmaking so line-toeing and occasionally cartoonish that it makes the idea of a wall between Hollywood and Chinese interests actually sound kinda great.
February 23, 2017
A fairly goofy monster movie that manages to seem bloated even with a running time of less than 90 minutes.
February 19, 2017
If this is the future for motion pictures, god help us all.
February 23, 2017
Its epic imagery - the rows of soldiers, the rain of spears, the surging forces - is undercut by the Saturday-matinee cheesiness of the concept.
February 17, 2017
To watch it is to be aware of how little movies this size have to do with art and how much they are product, the result of a calculation involving actorly appeal and spectacle, because spectacle, not story, has the... most universal draw.
March 09, 2017
As ambitious as it is flat.
March 23, 2017
The Great Wall is not a groundbreaking film by any means, but at least it's fun
February 17, 2017
Damon's wild-haired gringo claims to have soldiered under "many flags," which would explain his shape-shifting accent that's Irish except for when it sounds beamed from Mars.
March 01, 2017
In these days when so-called resistance, from D.C. to the streets, uses dishonorable methods, The Great Wall offers a conscientious reminder of artistic principle, the respite of an aesthetically powerful comic book.
February 28, 2017
Zhang's enviable eye for color and composition is somewhat occluded by the gargantuan scale; still, he finds beauty in the chaos (a climactic interior action sequence is splashed with rainbow beams from stained-glass windows).
February 23, 2017
In other words, it's another tedious special-effects-fest that has flimsy wisps of completely pat and predictable story blowing around interminable swaths of stuff that would 100% kill people but doesn't, and none of the characters are that interesting.
February 17, 2017
What a bummer that all Chinese master Zhang Yimou and Hollywood star Matt Damon come up with is a B-level creature feature with delusions of grandeur.
February 23, 2017
Zhang is all about the spectacle.... He delivers this with gusto, unconcerned with whether the finer points of the narrative make sense.
March 01, 2017
A splashy, old-fashioned monster movie stupid enough to amuse audiences from any culture that enjoys watching folks fight giant lizards.
February 27, 2017
This should have been a much richer or at least exciting adventure.
February 23, 2017
It's too late to call The Great Wall an expensive failure, but it's not likely to leave many satisfied viewers in its wake.
February 17, 2017
Damon's wild-haired gringo claims to have soldiered under "many flags," which would explain his shape-shifting accent that's Irish except for when it sounds beamed from Mars.
March 01, 2017
With such a big canvas to lay such cliched material upon, The Great Wall really does feel like placing a Big Mac upon gold plated silverware.
