Mulan review

MULAN (2020)

Director: Niki Caro

Stars: Yifei Liu, Donnie Yen, Li Gong

Runtime: 115min

 

OK. First I should say that I've never seen the animated Mulan. I have no interest in Disney princesses. But I thought I should check out the huge-budget live action remake since it was directed by New Zealander and much of it appears to take place in Middle Earth, or possibly the South Island.

And I must confess I find myself a bit baffled by how this sort of stuff is okay for kids, though the film and and its story are actually very well handled. 

Mulan is the least annoying Disney heroine I can remember. The story follows her donning the disguise of a boy so she can use her extraordinary fighting skills – ascribed by wise elders to her (inexplicably powerful) chi – to help save the Emperor (Jet Li) from an uprising of evil swordsmen who have a sorcerer helping them.

And it all goes as expected. She proves herself in the army, and eventually fights the (female) sorcerer who has seen through her disguise from the start and is actually a relatively sympathetic character, despite killing many people. “Hiding your true chi makes you weak” the Sorcerer says or some such and you know that to complete her journey of empowerment Mulan must cast off the shackles of disguise and show her chi as a proper woman. Hooray! It's perfectly well handled and I'm sure will help empower young women the planet over.

The issue I have is the violence. This is an incredibly violent film, a large part of its runtime seemingly taken up by battles, battles in which soldiers hack away at each other with swords, stab and gouge their way with great enthusiasm. There are corpses piled as high as the Great Wall. And yet, despite all this, there is not a drop of blood anywhere to be seen. Not one. Perhaps to make up for this there is a lot of red in the costuming.

For those who care I understand there used to by a comedy dragon sidekick voiced by Eddie Murphy and much other cartoon business which has been dispensed with. Thankfully. What is left is – aside from the violence issue – a terrific film by Disney standards: as well as not getting too cloying or heavy-handed with its messaging it looks great, even if the familiarity of more than a few of the majestic vistas suggests that Frodo is lurking just off-camera; the cast is universally strong, including as it does a bunch of very qualified Chinese talent. 

                          

It's just that weird bloodless violence thing that bugs me a bit. Hell, I don't really care about the warping of young minds but there really is so much full-on fighting here that it must have some effect on them, and I can't imagine it being good...