There is a way to do this right. You can see it in "Hero," where the film is alternately a game of Go, a collection of ordered drops of rain, and many, many other things. That film mattered.
This one may be said to be important because it was a collaboration between Japanese and Chinese (which means the Red Army) concerns and it deals honestly with outrageous Japanese thuggery. And the production is expensive at least, with lots of people and accurate, detailed sets. But as with many collaborations, the artistic vision got watered down. Like hundreds, perhaps even thousands, it traces human emotions both caused and effected in societal conflict.
There is nothing new here, nothing effective. The fact that our chief males either are experts at this marvelous game or admirers of the art of playing matters little. It could have substituted a calligrapher, poet or swordsman. There's nothing at all of the surrounding and capture, the shifts and pulls of the game. One can see that the story was originally envisioned to be folded in this way, and perhaps the source material was. But as with so many others, it got lost on the way to the pier.
I found the performances stilted, even by Japanese standards. As they dominate this thing philosophically, that is the metric we should use I suppose.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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