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AKA:
Tau ming chong
Warlords (USA) (new title)
The Warlords (International) (English title)
Music by Chan Kwong Wing, Peter Kam and Leon Ko.
Warlords is a spectacular historical Asian action film starring Jet Li, Andrew Lau, and Takeshi Kaneshiro as sworn brothers and comrades-in-arms whose victories on the battlefield are tested by politics, personal ambition, and romantic rivalry during the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). Directed by Peter Chan (producer of The Eye series) and Wai Man Yip (Portland Street Blues, asst. dir on Young and Dangerous 3 and 4), neither of whom have the kind of extensive historical action film history this kind of a project would seem to demand and yet their collaboration here provides an astonishing film of emotional and visual depth. They have filled the film with the kind of huge battle scenes we've come to expect from contemporary Asian historical epics like Hero, Curse of the Golden Flower, Legend of the Black Scorpion (aka The Banquet), and the like, while providing enough room for character development, interaction, reflection, and change. The film was largely influenced by (although not a remake of) Chang Cheh's 1973 Shaw Bros martial arts classic, Blood Brothers.
Hong Kong composers Chan Kwong Wing (Infernal Affairs), Peter Kam (Tokyo Raiders, Isabella, Silk), and newcomer Leon Ko (Perhaps Love, Mr. Cinema) have collaborated together on the score, although it is not clear if they composed jointly or separately and had their efforts combined in editing (I suspect the latter). While the trio of composers gives the film an inconsistent musical tonality, their diverse efforts invest the film's individual sequences with immense power. The score works brilliantly despite its lack of thematic unity, through the evocative passion of its individual musical cues and a consistent tonality of elegant orchestration and musical progression. Kwong Wing provides a lengthy fight scene (track 4) with an inventive sonic array of drums, flutes, wailing voices, and electric guitars, bookended by a splendidly melodic orchestral heroes' theme; while the sudden outbreak of electric guitars are certainly contrapuntal to the film's period, they do lend a kind of thoughtless, mechanistic energy that is somehow appropriate to the spirit and substance of the vicious battle scene and its carnage (track 9 reprises the motif). Wing's hero theme is beautifully and powerfully reprised on track 8, embellished by choir. Ko provides a sumptuous love theme (track 5) as well as a massively powerful ride-into-battle theme (track 7).
Wing and Ko join forces for track 10, a 9-minute progressive action motif composition that rallies a number of melodic moments amidst its aggressive assault; it's a marvelous cue ringing with underlying emotive implications as the music reflects the ongoing conflicts between the three warlords even in the midst of the fury of battle. The duo repeat themselves with track 22, a 10-minute climactic scene in which the blood brothers' conflicts finally reach their inevitable comeuppance. It's an amazingly powerful and resonant composition, highlighting orchestra and choir, reflecting the spirit, conflicting loyalties and opposite commitments of each of the three. Peter Kam provides a poignant introspective motif for flute, violin, and acoustic guitar (track 11), setting aside a very tender moment. Track 13, by Wing, is an intensely evocative melody for strings, while Wing's Track 14 initially features a lovely violin melody backed by choir, before erupting into a powerful percussive/rhythmic action cue, retaining harsher intonations of choir to evoke a severer drama from the cue. Track 16, composed by Kam and Ko, features an amazing soprano vocal, evoking a kind of spiritual elegance upon the battlefield of war; Kam's Track 18 proffers a moving series of violin figures that grow in power and expressiveness, building up to a highly dramatic climax. Ko's final woodwind soliloquy, painted over a melancholically-strummed acoustic guitar, resolves the film and ends it with an air of tragic poignancy and needless loss.
Each of the cues is melodically appealing, and the battle scenes and dramatic cues harbor an intensity of emotive power that is quite striking. In a sense, the three composers assume the role of the film's three protagonists, each proffering a different but cohesive viewpoint, whose cohesion occasionally falters as will any venture devised by intense personalities, but whose loyalties remain steadfast even as their differences lead them to a heartbreaking denouement. The score also includes several classic compositions from Thai composer Chatchai Pongprapaphan, and is packaged in a 4-fold DVD-styled booklet from East West Records.
- music from the movies
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