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This movie is amazing, if you liked Akira Kurosawa's Ran (inspired by Sheakespeare's King Lear), you should like Feng Xiao-Gang's The Banquet. This movie is much more better then "House Of Flying Daggers" or "Hero". I don't see why this movie recieved some bad critics. It'S even much more fun the CTHD ever was.

Maybe some people didn't like the fact it was an adaption from Shakespeare's Hamlet "which is a great story" and it was masterly adapted to ancient China, as much as Ran seemed to fit with medieval Japan. Well it's what I'm thinking from my westerner point of view. Maybe it could seem akward to asian reviewers, or maybe be I'm too biased as a Ziyi fan. I don't know. It became my favorite Ziyi movie ! (well the previous movie I mention are very good, but this one is better). It's not the best performance Ziyi did, she was good, but I'm telling my overall appreciation of the movie. It may have been as good as with an other actress then our beloved Ziyi (which was great). To watch a better performance by Ziyi, maybe 2046 or Memoirs of a Geisha. Definitly, it would have my vote as best foreign picture on the Oscar.

All the cast was great, it seems logical, I don't know how much it looks like Hamlet, since I never seen the original play, but everything looked fine. Costumes, martial art scenes (cooler then in anything else, the best Yuen Wo-Ping did yet). The atmosphere of the movie. It's surely a 9.9/10 for me, it's almost perfect.

I don't know if all the mask thing was historicaly accurate for China ? In my mind, it had much a Japanese samurai mask feeling. But, the design was great to my taste. It's true that Japan Imperial court did addapted the Tang dinasty style, so it might possible that it was accurate. If it was not, I don't care. The idea might not be fresh, but the chinese adaption of this old story deserv to be praise. I feel almost the same with Ran, (except that Ran isn't my favorite Japanese movie, but one of my favorite). I think, The Banquet is even better the Ran because it's more artistic and maybe more violent. We see blood in "the banquet"

Ziyi was good as the cunning Empress, but she wasn't a cold blooded heartless cunning empress. Maybe some people didn't like that fact. It gave her more human feeling to Empress Wan. If some critics said that she was just playing "the pretty girl", it's because it's part of the role, and in fact, Ziyi is very pretty, so it would have been hard to be not that attractiv.

About Zhou Xun, she played a smaller role then I thought. She was cute. She did a good performance with the small part she had in the movie.

About Daniel Wu, it was the first time I've seen him. He fitted well the place of a tourmented chinese Hamlet. But maybe he wasn't as tourmented as I thought he could have been. You know, the famous "To be or not to be" scene wasn't at all in this movie. I think that in the original play, Hamlet is tourmented by the ghost of his father. We don't see things like this. The Crown Prince is more tourmented by the lonelyness of court life and exile then anything else. Even if he is sad about his father's death (I won't say more about it). Daniel Wu did well !

The other of the main cast did very well too, but I don't know their name. I'm talking about the Yin minister and his son, General Yin (father and brother of Qing, Zhou Xun's character).

I think it's a must have for Ziyi fans anyway.

See it for yourself, this movie was a good surprise, I didn't thought it would be that good. But it's only my opinion. I expect Ziyi of doing a great performance in Jasmine Women, she was good in the banquet, but it's not her best performance, she doesn't out-shine her co-stars as she did in CTHD.