Top 250 Challenge: 207

Ying Xiong (2002)
Number 153 on IMDb's Top 250

Near the end of the "Warring Kingdoms" period of China (over 2000 years ago), Nation of Zhao has three master assassins... Sky, Broken Sword, and Flying Snow. Because of them, King of Qin, ruler of Nation of Qin, was not able to sleep properly for ten years, worrying about attempts to kill him. Yet, all three were defeated by a minor Qin official by the name of Nameless... When the news reached the King, the King immediately summoned Nameless to the palace. In the Palace, mysterious candles are burning, and the King summoned Nameless to within a mere 10 paces away. Nameless told his tale about how he was able to use the weaknesses of three masters against themselves, and defeated them separately. However, King of Qin is a master strategist, and he recognized the inconsistencies within Nameless's story, and came up with his own story: the three masters allowed themselves to be defeated, in order to get Nameless within ten paces of the King. Nameless is most dangerous assassin of all. Nameless then replied that the King has misjudged one person... Broken Sword. The true story is then revealed...Nameless is only ten paces from the King of Qin, and his specialty move is Certain Death within Ten Paces...Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: This movie is the most expensive Chinese movie to date. That being said, Jet Li agreed to a pay cut so he could be in the movie. The emperor, after hearing Nameless tell him that there are 19 ways to write the word "sword", remarks that he would solve this problem. In history, the emperor of Qin (pronounced "chin") became the first emperor of China and succeeded in enforcing only one writing system in the whole of China. This way, whatever dialect people speak, they would be using the same set of characters making communication a lot easier. All of the soldiers in the Qin army sequence as well as the palace sequences were performed by actual Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers, except the stunt performers. It's estimated that 18000 were used as extras in the film.

Wow this is a beautiful film to watch and has the best use of color to tell a story that I have ever seen. It has amazing cinematography. The story is told in Rashomon style flashbacks with each flashback having a certain color. The original Flying Snow/ Broken Sword story was swathed in brilliant red, walls, clothing, everything showing their downfall due to passion. The second Flying Snow/Broken Sword story told by the emperor was bathed in light blue, where the two are dispassionate, cold, and calculating. The story of how they meet brings brilliant green showing their growing love. And finally the truth is told and Flying Snow and Broken Sword are in pure white and are shown as being noble and honorable. It was very cool to watch Flying Snow and Broken Sword's characters grow from the first telling to the last. Of course it also contains all the poetic martial arts and high flying wire work of the genre. I highly recommend this one.