The fact is that cultural influences of this movie - mainly being Russian - simply does not translate.
The cinematography is COMPLETELY horrible. The storyline is slapdash and the set design is crap! They've spent tons of money on Western stars and what they've got is something reminiscent of Russian fantasies of the 1950's. They've thrown in some Chinese martial arts and Wushu for good measure and mixed it with a batch of European pseudo-historical slop and called a movie. Don't waste your time. Russians simply haven't figured out how to make movies that relate anything worth seeing to an international movie audience yet. Certainly not where strong narrative of any kind is concerned and not since Eisenstein (and even then...yawn)!
The cinematography is COMPLETELY horrible. The storyline is slapdash and the set design is crap! They've spent tons of money on Western stars and what they've got is something reminiscent of Russian fantasies of the 1950's. They've thrown in some Chinese martial arts and Wushu for good measure and mixed it with a batch of European pseudo-historical slop and called a movie. Don't waste your time. Russians simply haven't figured out how to make movies that relate anything worth seeing to an international movie audience yet. Certainly not where strong narrative of any kind is concerned and not since Eisenstein (and even then...yawn)!