Zhao Wei

Anybody hungering for a good old-fashioned Western needs to check out Warriors of Heaven and Earth, which--although it's set in 7th-century China--has all the valor and spectacle of a John Ford picture. It also has a goofy supernatural streak, for the chopsocky crowd. The opening 10 minutes or so offer an alarmingly convoluted plot, but it swiftly settles down. What's going on is that a long-exiled Japanese hit man (Kiichi Nakai), hired to kill a renegade Chinese warrior (Jiang Wen), temporarily teams up with his quarry in order to escort a camel caravan along the Spice Road.

A crooked businessman hires a high-tech professional assassin team of two sisters to kill his elder brother. Fearing exposure by an undercover policewoman who has been shadowing the sisters, the businessman has the older sister killed and implicates the policewoman. The grieving younger sister and the framed policewoman must now form an alliance to bring down the businessman. Great high-kicking action in the tradition of Charlie's Angels and The Matrix.