Kingdom (2019)

Kingdom (2019)
Japanese title: キングダム(Kingudamu)
Translation: Kingdom

 

Starring: Kento Yamazaki, Ryô Yoshizawa, Masami Nagasawa, Kanna Hashimoto, Masahiro Takashima, Tak Sakaguchi, Kanata Hongô, Shinnosuke Mitsushima, Shin'nosuke Abe, Motoki Fukami, Naomasa Musaka, Wataru Ichinose
Director: Shinsuke Sato
Action Directors: Yuji Shimomura, Koji Kawamoto

 

Kingdom is a particularly interesting film in that it’s a Japanese movie about Chinese history. Although it’s not unheard of for one country to make movie about the history of another, in a closed-culture nation like Japan—where Japanese citizens born of foreigners like Koreans and Chinese aren’t considered real Japanese by many--it feels a little odd. Japan did celebrate and absorb much Chinese culture back in the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618 – 906) and I wonder if there has always been a place in Japanese imagination for Chinese culture and history.

There have been a handful of Japanese movies about Chinese history and folklore over the decades. The 1950s saw Japanese adaptations of Chinese legends and literature like Madame White Snake (1956) and Son Goku (1959), in addition the Shaw Brothers co-production Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (1955), about one of the “Four Beauties” of Chinese history. The 1980s saw the epic production of The Silk Road (1988), which is set in Western China during the Han Dynasty. The Warring States Era/Qin Dynasty (475-207 B.C.) had already been depicted in the 1962 film Shin no Shikoutei. In 2019, the live-action adaptation of the manga Kingdom represented another attempt for Japan to tell Chinese history.

The film can best be summed up as Shi Huangdi: Year One. It tells the story of the young King of Qin, Ying Zheng (Kamen Rider veteran Ryô Yoshizawa), who was the previous king's elder son, albeit with a concubine (in his case, a dancer). This doesn't sit well with his younger half-brother, Cheng Jiao (Kanata Hongô, of the live-action Full Metal Alchemist films), who's the son of royalty. Yeah, Cheng Jiao is very much the arrogant “peasants don’t have the right to breathe the same air as me” type, and he’ll be damned if he lets a half-caste son of a vulgar dancer rule the Kingdom of Qin.

The film is told from the POV of Li Xin (Kento Yamazaki, of Crazy Samurai Musashi and “Alice in Borderland”), an actual historical figure. Li Xin was one of Ying Zheng’s generals who fought by his side during the Warring States Era up until Ying Zheng unified China under the Qin Dynasty, becoming China’s first Emperor (Shi Huangdi, or Qin Shi Huang). According to the manga, Xin was a slave boy who taught himself swordplay, dreaming of one day becoming a great general. His fellow slave and blood brother, Piao (also played by Ryô Yoshizawa), is taken to the palace to be Ying Zheng's shadow. When Piao is killed during the coup d’état, Xin joins Ying Zheng on a quest to not only avenge his best friend, but to take his place among the great military men of China.

Despite the support that Ying Zheng has from his chancellor Chang Wen Jun (Masahiro Takashima, of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II) and a handful of retainers (not to mention a young lady in an owl costume named He Liao Diao), that isn’t nearly enough to get into the heavily-fortified palace and depose Cheng Jiao. We’re talking a ginormous building with multiple walled-off patios, each of which is filled to the brim with soldiers. Ying Zheng has a second chancellor who’s stationed in a neighboring kingdom with an even bigger army than that of his half-brother, but he’s not sure whose side the man is on at that moment. So, instead of risking it, he does something even more daring: he goes into the mountains and asks the Mountain People for their assistance. The mountain people were former allies of the Qin Kingdom, although at some point in the past two centuries, one of the Qin kings decided that their services were no longer necessary and turned on them. Can Ying Zheng convince the Mountain Queen to join forces with him? Will that be enough to make a stand against the superior forces of Cheng Jiao?

It is interesting to see a Japanese take on Chinese history. Knowing that this was based on a manga and some of the excesses in both that and anime, I was worried that Kingdom would come off looking a lot like Dynasty Warriors, rather than, say, Red Cliff. Thankfully, that doesn’t really come to pass in this movie, at least not to the point of distraction. There is the girl dressed up as an owl and some of the costumes, notably the one worn by General Wang Qi, have that anime feel to it. For example, the Mountain Tribe chieftain wears a suit of armor that looks more at home in a Greek mythology film. And the super-exaggerated action beats only really show up briefly at the very end—you know, the type where one guy will twirl his guan dao (which technically hadn’t even been invented yet) and a dozen guys will fly up into the air.

Speaking of which, much of the swordplay looks more like kenjutsu than wushu, the trade-off for having Japanese people make the film. The action was staged by Yuji Shimomura (Versus) and Koji Kawamoto (John Wick 4). Much of the action involves sword fighting, complemented by wire-assisted jumps (especially from the awesomely-crazy Mountain warriors) and lots of people getting knocked back dozens of feet. I’m disappointed that more wasn’t made of the dagger-axes, a common cavalry weapon during that period of Chinese history. Red Cliff made good use of those weapons in some of its battle sequences, but here they act mainly as set dressing. There is a neat, exaggerated fight between Li Xin and an assassin who fights with axes, a blowgun, and a bunch of leather straps covered with sharp metal coins, set in a bamboo forest.

Japanese martial arts legend Tak Sakaguchi shows up as the general-turned-bodyguard Zuo Ci, who fights with a nigh-invincible "drunken samurai" style (at least that's how it looked). His one-on-one against Li Xin makes up what is essentially the more “personal” fight amidst the climatic siege of the Qin palace. Masami Nagasawa (Shin Ultraman; Shin Kamen Rider) kicks butt as the Mountain Queen Yang Duanhe, wielding two-fisted scimitars with great aplomb. There is one bizarre moment in the action, in the form of the Court Executioner, a gigantic fellow who is built like the Hulk, but those facial scars makes one think of The Thing (of the Fantastic Four). I’m guessing his inclusion was either related to the success of the MCU or the popularity of 300 and some of the quirky characters in that film. But it was an unnecessary inclusion.

My main problem is lead actor Kento Yamazaki, who subscribes too much to the Yelling!!! school of acting. His overacting is a bit too much, especially in the first third. The rest of the actors aquit themselves well to this sort of movie, but Yamazaki just irritated me to no end. A couple of anime screams is fine, but too many and I wish that he’d just get his neck slit early on. In the end, it would be sort of amusing to watch this as part of a trilogy alongside Zhang Yimou’s Hero and Chen Kaige’s The Emperor and the Assassin, to see the evolution of the Shi Huangdi personage from idealistic king to necessary butcher to paranoid mass murderer.