Movie Review - The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines or Clash of Empires: The Battle for Asia (2011)

I rented this movie, Clash of Empires: The Battle for Asia, because the cover looked so cheesy.  It brought me back to the old days when I reviewed movies on the previous Gedren's Peak website just because they were bad--movies like Bog and Robot Ninja.  This movie went and pulled the wool over my eyes, because this is a great movie despite technical failings.

The story reads as an account in the Kedah Annals ( I had to look that up on Wikipedia) by a Malay king of his far-removed ancestor, Merong Mahawanga (indeterminate South Asian actor Stephen Rahmen Hughes), descendant of Alexander the Great, future founder of the Malay Dynasty and future ruler of Langasuka.  The story speaks of his earlier vagabond life and how he came to prominence by helping out a foreign prince from a faraway empire of the world--the Roman Empire.
Prince Marcus Carpenius (Gavin Stenhouse) of Rome is to be wed to Princess Meng Li Hua (Chinese actress and model Jing Lusi) of the Empire of China in the days of the Han Dynasty, placing the events around 120 AD/CE.  The meeting place between the two empires is a well-known trading place and not ruled by any king.  It is populated by several indigenous tribes, one of which has taken to piracy called the Garuda.
The barbarian Garuda--known for murdering every man, woman and child in a village under plunder--are led by the shaman Taji (W. Hanafi W. Su) and his successor, the wily Kamawas (Khir Rahman). They have decided to kidnap the Chinese princess and her clever handmaiden Ying Ying (Nell Ng) and ransom the princess for 1000 taels of gold and sovereignty.  In the ensuing battle, the Roman prince is lost and our main character Merong fights on despite his wounds causing him to faint.  It is Merong's that triggers the meeting with his teacher Kesum the guru (Rahim Razali) and his future wife Embok (Ummi Nazeera).

But I am getting ahead of myself...

This movie is nuts.  It's as if they took everything from 300, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Last Samurai, Ong Bak 2 and 3, and the DTV movie Legend of the Tsunami Warrior (please find and watch this last one NOW) and hit puree on the blender.  Everything but the kitchen sink was thrown in, only because the kitchen sink had not been invented yet.  Despite dumping everything all over everything else, they still managed to mess up the movie due to misapplied VFX and film editing.  For instance: one minute Prince Marcus is some nancy who only uses a gladius, gets murdered, then comes back swinging bamboo sticks like an Escrima master? I know, suspension of disbelief, but damn they coulda done a better job of editing to have that transition make sense while making the prince's stunt double actually look like the principal actor in combat scenes (see first paragraph). 
Creative control is the goal of many an artist, but Yusry Kru (the director, writer, AND visual effects director) really ran a mile off an inch if you understand my reference.  Of all the ways to tell a story, he focused on visuals instead of a coherent story.  In turn, the visuals took up so much time that the visuals had to be condensed for the sake of the barest coherence.  This is one of those things that make me mad about films and filmmakers.  If no one can follow a film's story all you have to depend on is muddy visuals (see first paragraph, again) in otherwise well-choreographed fight scenes and poor Photoshop work on your DVD covers... which is how I ended up reviewing this DVD in the first place...

Oh, I see what you did there, Mr. Kru.  Touché.

CHOICE CUTS:

• The princess' servant Ying Ying turned out to be my favorite character.  Smart, industrious, adventurous, and so on: she must have been some sort of author avatar or Mary Sue.
• The princess had an entire barge for her clothes.  Government spending at work, kids.
• The road Merong followed to achieve his kingship were blended into a mega montage: a training montage overlaid with a fighting montage, while intercut with a romantic development montage.
• Roman nancy to Caucasian Escrima master.  In a few weeks? I'd love to see how he was able to train that fast without using the Matrix.
• Guru Kesum stays smokin'. Full stop.
• Embok reminds me of someone from college who was also not very nice to people she didn't know.

This movie is supposed to be tied to the history of the Malay people, but somehow got re-branded as a "battle for Asia" in foreign markets.  If it hadn't been, I wouldn't have been able to do my Movie Guy voice when I read the Western market title: CLASH OF EMPIRES.  Try it; you'll see both how silly and entertaining the movie is just by doing that.  Rent this once, as repeat viewings don't do the first time around justice.

RATING: 5/10