THE WARLORDS

Over the last decade, we have been offered a bevy of outrageously luscious Asian period dramas ( House of Flying Daggers, Hero, Curse of the Golden Flower) that have painted China as a version of Oz in which a fabulous gay wedding is permanently under way.

THE WARLORDS/TAU MING CHONG ***

Directed by Peter Chan. Starring Jet Li, Andy Lau, Xu Jinglei, Takeshi Kaneshiro 15A cert, Cineworld, Dublin, 126 min

It is, thus, sobering to encounter a Hong Kong epic that forswears flying ninjas and bejewelled palaces for muddy bruisers and waterlogged trenches.

The Warlords, which tells a tale set during a 19th-century Chinese civil war, is not as seductive as those earlier films, but it has a rude integrity that sets it apart from the pack.

The plot of this long, busy film - too long, too busy, perhaps - defies easy summary. Following a furious conflagration, a defeated general, Pang Qingyun (Jet Li), is taken in by a good-natured peasant, Lian, and subsequently becomes her lover. Before he has had time to recuperate, Pang is recruited into a band of high-minded hoodlums ruled by Zhao Erhu and Jiang Wuyang. The three men forge a firm friendship, but - shades of Camelot here - it transpires that Lian is Zhao's wife.

On the way to the inevitable personal falling out, the warlords fight a number of fantastically noisy, brilliantly staged battles on behalf of the government forces. The long passage depicting the siege of Suzhou City is particularly brutal and, with its depictions of damp trench warfare, nods towards conflicts to come in Europe.

The Warlords is, indeed, a film that will make perfect sense to western viewers who have never before read a subtitle. Equally indebted to Japanese samurai cinema and the Sergio Leone films that movement inspired, it gallops along with a rude confidence that proves hard to resist.

The picture is overburdened with extraneous plot and saddled with conspicuously sentimental incidental music. But, for all its flaws, it still grips throughout. Certainly, The Warlordsis the best film about the (reviewer checks notes) Taiping Rebellion I can remember seeing.