Clashes of civilisations and a rousing pacifist message make for grand entertainment in Daniel Lee’s Dragon Blade, a high-concept tale of Romans in ancient China that pairs Hong Kong’s Jackie Chan with Hollywood stars. The story unfolds in 48 BC in the desert landscapes of western China, where tensions flare among 36 nations on the Silk Road. Stepping in as a mediator between Huns, Uyghurs, White Indians and others is the Silk Road Protection Squad led by Huo An (Chan), a top martial artist regularly spouting conciliatory advice. Things go wrong for the team when they’re arrested on shock charges of smuggling and sent to the remote city of Wild Geese Gate to help repair its crumbling walls. And then the Romans show up.
Headed by Lucius (John Cusack), a tired and hungry Roman legion arrives at the city and prepares to take it over, only to have the eventual battle stopped by a sandstorm. Huo, ever the peacemaker, offers shelter in the city and Lucius accepts, setting in motion a partnership between the Romans and those labouring on the massive renovations. As work gets under way to quickly finish the city’s restoration with Roman construction know-how, a new threat emerges. The legion is guarding a blind boy, Publius (Jozef Waite), and both he and Lucius are being pursued by Roman consul Tiberius (Adrien Brody) – a ruthless figure who leads a 100,000-strong army and has plans to take over the Silk Road for the Roman Empire.
Viewers may be told that Dragon Blade is inspired by true events, but the founding concept of Romans reaching the edge of the Gobi Desert more than 2,000 years ago remains only a theory. It’s better, then, to take Daniel Lee’s film as simply a huge spectacle with a cross-cultural novelty not unlike that of Japan’s recent Thermae Romae comedies. Daniel Lee uses the Roman angle to breathe new life into the flagging Chinese period epic genre as fights, battle concepts and even skills competitions display fresh forms and contrasts, and cultural difference is played up in song, engineering and more.
The action in Dragon Blade brings in the large battlefield scenes expected of its genre, but also turns in impressive combat sequences using the Wild Geese Gate project as a backdrop and source of props. Battles and even torture scenes can be brutal, yet Chan’s own fights follow the actor’s long-standing approach of downplaying violence. Chan can be seen slapping people with his sword, for instance, rather than actually slashing through flesh.
With the film mainly using Mandarin and English, Chan employs approaches from both his Chinese and Hollywood films, extending the large-scale action of earlier Hong Kong hits and throwing in his familiar style of English delivery. The two US actors meanwhile put in distinctive roles, with John Cusack’s Lucius allowed to gain rapport with Chan through quieter moments, and Adrien Brody, in his second Chinese film (following the 2012 famine epic Back to 1942), going all out playing a vile adversary.
On its original release in Asia, Dragon Blade played with a wraparound device, starting the film with modern-day explorers finding a lost Roman city in China and ending it with them moved to tears by its story. But Lee’s epic is strong enough without such added context. Coursing through everything, from early battles among the three-dozen nations to scenes with Romans, is an upbeat theme of building peace among peoples. With the positive message boosting Dragon Blade’s sheer entertainment value, the film won an especially warm response from mainland Chinese audiences, including holding the top slot at the box office right through the recent lunar new year holidays.