White Vengeance (鸿门宴传奇) (2011)

When a despotic dynasty falls, 2 generals come to face to face as they mop up the old country. White Vengeance settles on their fraught peace conference.

The conceit is simple: White Vengeance is to the pre-Han what the Battle of the Red Cliffs was to the Three Kingdoms. Machiavellian politicians abound, trading political strategems with plots and counter-plots.

The premise alas doesn't sell; the script is underwritten, the characters flattened, and the audience trusted to know their history and the film's conceit to do the director's work for him.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 30 November 2011.