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- 2019
- Not Rated
- Well Go USA Entertainment
- 1 h 56 m
- 2019
- Not Rated
- Well Go USA Entertainment
- 1 h 56 m
Summary In a kingdom ruled by a young and unpredictable king, the military commander has a secret weapon: a “shadow”, a look-alike who can fool both his enemies and the King himself. Now he must use this weapon in an intricate plan that will lead his people to victory in a war that the King does not want. [Well Go USA]
Directed By: Yimou Zhang
Written By: Wei Li, Sujin Zhu, Yimou Zhang
- 2019
- Not Rated
- Well Go USA Entertainment
- 1 h 56 m
- 2019
- Not Rated
- Well Go USA Entertainment
- 1 h 56 m
Shadow
7.3
Where to Watch
Summary In a kingdom ruled by a young and unpredictable king, the military commander has a secret weapon: a “shadow”, a look-alike who can fool both his enemies and the King himself. Now he must use this weapon in an intricate plan that will lead his people to victory in a war that the King does not want. [Well Go USA]
Directed By: Yimou Zhang
Written By: Wei Li, Sujin Zhu, Yimou Zhang
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
81
96% Positive
24 Reviews
24 Reviews
4% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
81
96% Positive
24 Reviews
24 Reviews
4% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
A martial-arts movie landmark, as strong in its performances as it is spectacularly novel in its violence.
Every supremely controlled stylistic element of Zhang Yimou’s breathtakingly beautiful Shadow is an echo of another, a motif repeated, a pattern recurring in a fractionally different way each time.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 56 User Ratings
7.3
77% Positive
43 Ratings
43 Ratings
16% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
7% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 56 User Ratings
7.3
77% Positive
43 Ratings
43 Ratings
16% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
7% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
Shadow is a mesmerizing movie experience. Shot in a monochromatic style, but with accurate flesh tones, it is beautiful to look at. The over exaggerated acting style makes it feel like you are watching opera. The fight scenes are as beautiful as they are brutal. The scene where the warriors are sliding down the street with their metal umbrellas spinning has to be seen to be believed. You're not really sure who is in complete control of the outcome until the end of the film. If you're going to watch it at home on video, watch it in 4k.
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Beautifully crafted and masterfully shot. Fantastic choreography.
A bit more intrigue and story that I expected.
We really enjoyed it
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Shadow shows a master at the top of his game, and if you have any love at all for the movies and the places they can take you, catch this one on the biggest screen possible.
Drawing from the style of Chinese ink brush paintings, and aided by the rain that pours constantly, the film has a watery, fluid look and texture, each exquisite frame a moving painting.
After the disappointing martial-monster mash-up of The Great Wall, this represents a return to the majesty and emotional finesse of Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
The scales ultimately tip slightly in favor of style, but when that style is this gorgeous, remembering a movie for the way it looks rather than its plot isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Shadow isn’t a bad epic so much as a banal one.
This movie was actually kind of awesome! This is a Chinese film, released last year in its home country but released in 2019 in North America. In ancient China, an army commander’s decoy, or shadow, trains for a one-on-one battle to the death with the commander of the enemy army to determine who wins a captured city, and it just gets crazier from there. While this movie was kind of slow for the first half hour or so, it really picks up after that! This movie is absolutely beautiful. It has a colour scheme of mostly black and white. It is always cloudy and it is always raining. It looks like a painting, it’s just a feast for the eyes. The performances were really good. A lot of the acting in this movie is very subtle and you need to pay close attention to their facial expressions and body language. The fight choreography is also brilliant. It’s super bloody and brutal, and also very creative! The main character fights with one of the coolest weapons I’ve ever seen in a movie, an umbrella made out of blades! The music was also pretty fantastic. Overall, I highly recommend this movie! It’s beautiful, unique and awesome! Check it out!
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Zhang Yimou movies are all very similar to me (Except the fantastic House of Flying Daggers) in that they are all pretty to look at but have very little substance, no character development and overall neither bore nor interest me. They put me in an entertainment limbo zone, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I almost feel a sort of meditation looking at beautiful images and hearing sounds but not feeling anything what so ever. Here the color is drained to a monochrome except for flesh tones. Hero was the same way, colors represented the acts but nothing meant anything. It ends when the credits roll, other wise I would not know it's over.
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Chinese writer/director Yimou Zhang’s ‘Shadow’ is largely an example of a trailer being better than the film itself. The trailer is captivating, leading one to believe the movie is going to be mixture of martial arts fighting and palace intrigue. However, the full extent of the film is largely unbalanced in this regard, with most of the runtime bogged down with political maneuvering and the action sequences only ramping up towards the last quarter of the movie. What stands out most is the strikingly beautiful set design, featuring a stark black and white color palette inspired by the ancient Chinese painting tradition of ink brush.
Yet the most challenging aspect of the movie is trying to keep track of the plot’s myriad twists and turns. It’d assumably be easily to do if one were fluent in the native language. However, trying to follow the labyrinthian storyline is exceedingly difficult given the fact that the plot is dense and the film is subtitled. As a result, we’d recommend watching 2016’s ‘The Handmaiden’ instead, which is a better representative in the genre.
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Awards
Golden Horse Film Festival
• 4 Wins & 12 Nominations
International Online Cinema Awards (INOCA)
• 4 Wins & 9 Nominations
Asian Film Critics Association Awards
• 3 Wins & 8 Nominations
