The Great Wall – SPOILER-FREE Review
Directed by: Yimou Zhang
Starring: Matt Damon, Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Hanyu Zhang, Eddie Peng, Lu Han, Kenny Lin, Junkai Wang, Zheng Kai
Runtime: 104 min
The Great Wall is the biggest film ever shot ENTIRELY in China and it’s directed by one of its best directors of all time, Yimou Zhang. Starring Matt Damon (William Garin) as a very skilled archer, this film tells us the fictional story of this iconic structure’s origins through a time of war against monsters.
For the first half-hour, more or less, I kept thinking “how is it possible for a movie this entertaining to be devastated by critics?”. The first battle of the movie is really great, the visuals are stunning, the army is unbelievable, the action is mostly well-shot, it actually has a good story/concept and both Matt Damon‘s and Pedro Pascal‘s (Pero Tovar) characters seem interesting … What could possibly ruin this movie?!
Well, basically that’s the only entertaining part of the whole runtime. The second and third act are basically trying to put the audience to sleep, the pacing abruptly drops to a slow-burn for the rest of the film because the characters are just awfully bland. William has a very interesting past, but the script’s lack of depth and creativity doesn’t allow Matt Damon to shine in this one. In fact, this was the first time ever that an actor’s accent messed with me: Matt Damon, you should’ve starred yourself on Manchester by the Sea … You’d maybe be holding an Oscar right now.
The visuals are really beautiful for most of the runtime, but the CGI monsters (which are great, in my opinion) sometimes took me off the film when close-fighting with someone. After the first battle, every action scene is too predictable, cheesy and not that captivating. The story fails to hold the audience’s attention when the action stops due to its simply bad script and characters that don’t even fit into the film (Willem Dafoe is in this movie for no purpose whatsoever).
Also, the last act is super choppy. There’s a lot of footage that we didn’t see, The Great Wall was probably intended to be a 2h30 epic, but I guess their time run out and they just delivered what they could. The tone is unbalanced, I felt like I was watching an American blockbuster, then a Chinese film and then just a bad drama of sorts … It’s just a mess.
The Great Wall has great visuals, a good first act and a concept with some potential. However, the rest of the film lacks script’s creativity, characters’ depth, and captivating action. The first battle is awesome, but from that moment on it’s a horrible slow-burn, with bad dialogue, an unexplored interesting past from Matt Damon‘s character and a super cheesy, unoriginal and predictable third act. Damon‘s performance it’s far from his best, but Tian Jing (Commander Lin Mae) and Pedro Pascal are surprisingly good in the middle of this mess. Still, not enough to rate this movie positively …
Rating: C
