Mulan: Legendary Warrior [Blu-ray] [2009]

Have read other reviews here so decided not to take them into account as I turned down the lights, turned up the amp and headed into a full on experience!After 5 minutes I had to get up to check I had bought the right version of the movie, I had totally misunderstood the fact that his was an English subtitle edition and a 2 hour reading experence I was not expecting. I decided to keep going, more and more I got into the run and the subtitles did eventually did not bother me. You get into the habit of following the movie with your broader view while giving more focus to the subtitles. Credit to the editors here, the text lines were kept short and I had no problem following the dialogue.The plot of the movie is well known so not going into that here, however the plot lines do entail several aspects:- You are basically in a war movie, so some blood, guts and gore runs through the whole movie.- You are in a secret plot, to keep the identity of the woman 'Mulan' from leaking out.- You are in a love story when she and her corresponding general fall in love.These plots and subdifuses tangle their way through the movie and never let you relax. I found the movie really riviting.There are some points though that donts stack up:- Mulan just looks like a woman all the way through the movie, I am sure sleeping in a tent for several years with 100 other blokes your secret would have come out.- Why did she not cut her hair off to look like a man, several times when se realaxes a full metre of it comes falling out of her head-dress!- Her voice is also much higher than all the blokes around her, with this and her tears on several occassions, I would certainly be involved in a rumour or two!If you discount the downsides and just look at this as a movie to absorb yourself in, then go for it. Remember your investments will be required in terms of reading but yes I think it's worth it in the end. I enjoyed the film and that's what counts.Colin.

Ok but I prefer the Disney animated version.

Happy with item

Good film, worth watching but I preferred the Chinese version even with the sub-titles.

The only way to see this movie is if you are brain-dead and while this may work for your generic Hollywood action flicks, I had greater expectations from an Asia production.Surely we know the story, we had the laughs with the sweet Disney cartoon.Putting it into a live action should work with some decent writing, but that didn't happen. In fact, what hampers the experience the most is the sheer quantity of contradictions and western cliches. Anyone familiar with asian movies knows their main attractions: a completely surreal background that servers to house a deep story that tends to question and twist morals and/or stir deep feelings about an idea or concept. In Mulan, we have nothing.Sure, the graphics are decent, nice effects, good fighting scenes. But the characters? The bad guys are one-dimensional (if that, I would say half-dimensional). Their purpose is to be mean for no reason (unlike just about every other asian movie out there, where bad and good are blurred and left out to perception).The good characters are idiotic. Take Mulan: she takes her father's place in the military. Fine by me, she can do it, she's a trained fighter of decent skill. But then ...- her father was known to not have a son, but this raises no alarm bells- if she was a trained fighter, why does she have a problem taking pragmatic decisions in the army?- suddenly after joining, she starts having issues with killing and/or ordering men to their death, forgetting THAT IS THE ARMY, those that go there that's what they do!- she cries a lot, is skittish, raises a lot of brows but nobody reports her- her mood swings get a whole lot more people killed than her general mishaps, but she has more issues with the latter than the former (simply because the story follows her in the army, but the outcome of the army's failings under her orders on the general population is not shown)- in the end of the movie, she spares her horse while ordering everyone else to kill theirs (later she wants to kill her horse too, but some friends prevent that) and then takes her horse and leaves everyone behind leaderless (smoke that for responsibility)One would expect some character evolution (we see more of that in Disney), perhaps more of what we can see in Crouching Tiger, Hero or even any Jackie Chan movie, but no ... not here ... not Mulan. Mulan remains the generic spoiled brat right until the end.

Mulan was a good film to watch and have as an addition to your DVD library I would rate it along simular lines as The Warrior directed by Kim Sung-Su.... The story line goes; elderly warriors health slowly depletes he has a duaghter who he raises alone' this duaghter is an only child, she has learned greatly her farthers martial arts skill and has tom boy tendencies the old warrior is resigned to the fact that he will need to marry her off soon and advises her to forget about what she has learned of fighting skills. War breaks out again and recruitment official visits village with list of all men of age to attend, the old warrior name is called up and he gathers himself up attempting to summon up the strengh for one final battle which has already long gone and is resigned to it that he will not return. during the night of preparation daughter mulan decide she wil seize the opportunity to follow in fathers foot steps and carry the great warriors name of her fathers clan and takes up the armour and battle gear and gallops off before day break knowing the old man sleeps in deep slumber.... The battle seens are very good and the story goes on to see her rise to leadership position her stratergic skills and cunning surpassing all and finally realizing that a warrior life is her destiny even love and emotion must be sacrifice.Yes I believe that man and woman watching this film will like it because it says women can be and are as strong as men in their own way" ying and yang I guess adjusting and flowing balancing out the positive strenghs in each other providing the way for survival and sustained life.Alan Mason