Plot
The film is set in western China in 700 during the Tang Dynasty, and revolves around two protagonists, the first of which is Lieutenant Li of the Chinese army. Li's refusal to kill Göktürk women and child prisoners causes a mutiny, leading him to be expelled from the army and become a fugitive, traveling through the Gobi Desert. He eventually comes across a caravan which carries a powerful, mystical relic accompanied by a Buddhist monk. Li protects the caravan from Göktürks as well as the overlord of the region, Master An, who is hired by the Göktürk Khan to seize the relic.
The second protagonist, a Japanese emissary, Lai Xi, is ordered by the emperor of China to kill the fugitive, Li. In a twist of fate, Lai Xi realizes that the caravan is on a mission and helps Li to defend it, and ensures that it arrives at the capital safely. They promise to fight each other only after their duty is done, although that battle never comes to pass.
Read more about this topic: Warriors Of Heaven And Earth
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)