China's top film makers duel at box office
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-19 22:19

But Chen has upped the ante with his new release, to be distributed in the United States under the title "Master of the Crimson Armor" and which has already been put forward as China's entry for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. It has also been nominated for a Golden Globe.

"'The Promise' has outdone 'Hero'," Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post said following preview screenings in October. The paper, which predicted the film would outdo "Hero" at the box office, praised Chen for focusing his storyline on China's long-time philosophical obsession with fate and trying to change one's destiny.

The story surrounds three love rivals -- a slave, a general and an evil duke -- who battle to win the hand of willowy Hong Kong leading lady Cecilia Cheung.

The film's international cast, including Korean heart throb Jang Dung-Kun as the slave, Japan's Hiroyuki Sanada as the general and Hong Kong's Nicholas Tse as the duke, is also likely to boost the movie in Asia's biggest film markets.

Zhang too has drawn on overseas talent, casting Japanese actor Ken Takakura in the lead of his new film.

The director has been seeking to work with Takakura since he first saw him on the silver screen in the 1970s when he was a student at the Beijing Film Academy.

"I created this film to make my dream come true," Zhang, 54, told reporters at a special screening in Tokyo.

"I was so impressed by Mr. Takakura's unique style of solitude and quietness when I saw his film 'Kimiyo Fundo no Kawa o Watare' (Cross the River with Anger) 30 years ago," he said.

Zhang cast Takakura in a non-speaking role in "Hero", but the 74-year old Japanese legend, dubbed the " Clint Eastwood" of Japan for his roles in 1960s gangster movies, said he wanted a better, "more moving" part.

"Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles" follows the journey of a Japanese fisherman and his dying son as they travel to China in search of the secret behind a local opera.

The film is a return to Zhang's mid-career, lower-budget works such as "Qiu Ju Goes To Court" (1992), and 1999's "Not One Less" and "The Road Home" that told moving stories of individuals as they struggled through life in China.

Zhang has won acclaim for his strikingly visual films such as "Red Sorghum", "Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lantern", all films set in China's countryside and which starred Gong Li.

Chen and Zhang's careers have run in parallel. Both 1982 graduates of the Beijing Film Academy, China's most prestigious film school, they worked together on Chen's critically acclaimed directorial debut "Yellow Earth", with Zhang as cinematographer.

The two directors have rivaled each other before, with Zhang's "Hero" based on the legendary assassination plot against China's first emperor Qinshi Huangdi, the central theme in Chen's 1999 big-budget box office flop "The Emperor and the Assassin".

Chen's most popular film to date is 1993's "Farewell My Concubine," which took home the Palme d'Or and the International Critics Prize at Cannes, his other works include "Life On A String", "Temptress Moon" and the Hollywood-backed "Killing Me Softly" in 2001.