Cast Member: Wu Chun

It has numerous nods to the Shaw Brothers classics and harks back to those swordplay flicks of yesteryear, making you smile, cry, jump for joy and shout like a banshee, like any good martial arts film should.

‘Butterfly Lovers’ is a forgettable version of a legend that deserves a definitive screen portrayal – it has moments of interest, but proves to be an unevenly yoked movie.

The somewhat sluggish pace, the constant need to flashback to an incident from Li’s past, and a surfeit of cardboard characters rob the flick of any adventure fun.

It’s just so generic, so riddled with the current Chinese cinematic pox that it is impossible to care about.

Yu’s epic is often stunning to look at, is a lot less stuffy and longwinded than many a recent Chinese period epic, moves at a fair clip and delivers a surfeit of adrenaline surged spectacle.