The Great Wall

Two medieval European mercenaries (Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal), in China to steal the secret of gunpowder, find themselves prisoners caught up in a war with strange velociraptor-like creatures that attack China every 60 years. Director Zhang Yimou, the darling of art-house cinemas the world over, tries his hand at a fantasy adventure epic and achieves only low camp, albeit with his customary eye for brilliant color and striking tableaux. As the presence of Yimou and a cluster of Chinese stars (led by Tian Jing as a female general) demonstrate, the movie is a blatant attempt to suck up to Chinese audiences, with a take-the-money-and-run script by a six-man tag team of American writers struggling to disguise the fact that this is just a cheesy monster movie tarted up in imperial Chinese drag. J.L.