This is in my top 3 favourite films of all time. I've watched it countless times and of course I'll watch it again.

The plot is rather rudimentary. A bunch of people is chasing another bunch of people for two and a half hours.

But! Three things make those 2,5 h worth your time:

+ it's freaking beautiful. The photography is a piece of art. How to take dust, rags and ruins and make gorgeous pictures, that's the magic of cinema (yeah, Wong Kar-wai did it first in Ashes of Time, ok).

+ the action scenes. We get to see all sorts of battles, duels, skirmishes, many tactics, lots of blood (and lots of arrows through necks for some reason), and all of it is rather believable. No wire action here. The fighting is beautifully filmed (by someone who actually knows how to break the ''hold the camera steady when filming action'' rule) while managing to appear realistic.

+ all of this is nice, but this movie's great strength is the characters and the relationships between them. I don't want to make this review too long, so I'll just say this film has a great cast that brings to life every single character, down to the last random merchant.

I can't recommend this film enough.