Martial arts star Jet Li Lian-jie wants his latest film The Warlords to set a new standard in Chinese cinema.
'There have been certain stereotypes in making a large-scale Chinese costume drama successful. It has to be filmed beautifully in terms of settings, costumes, action ... and sometimes even the killings are filmed romantically.'
Li (above) hopes audiences will appreciate the anti-war message of the film. Some of the lead actors will not make it to the end of The Warlords - main characters usually die in Chinese films, unlike typical Hollywood happy endings - so he believes it will be a bigger box office hit in Asia.
Peter Chan Ho-sun directs the film, and Li plays General Pang Qingyun, who is obsessed with power and breaks his promise to blood brothers Zhao Erhu (Andy Lau Tak-wah) and Jiang Wuyang (Takeshi Kaneshiro). Unlike the classic action hero roles Li played early in his acting career such as director Tsui Hark's Wong Fei-hung series in the 1990s or, later, kung fu master Huo Yuanjia in Ronny Yu Yan-tai's Fearless in 2006, his role as General Pang is very complex and multidimensional.
Even his co-star, mainland actress Xu Jinglei, said she felt that Li had totally let go of his hero image. 'In one scene, I was feeding him congee. As he was meant to have been starved for such long time, he couldn't swallow the food and spat it all out with tears on his face. They were real tears,' Xu said.
Though he plays a villain in the film, Li doesn't think a character can be categorised as only good or bad. 'I have been acting for over 20 years and the characters I have played are generally simple and direct but there shouldn't be only black and white in each character - there can also be something in between,' the 44-year-old actor said.