The Promise (2005) - Chen Kaige 

Well since my expectations for this film were significantly lowered by many people (including several members of this site) I can't say I was disappointed. That said this film would rank next to Sweeney Todd as the film with the most pointless use of CGI, I mean really what was the point of all that? The film did get to be compelling for awhile and although a little too much flash and pageantry it could have worked on its own as a rather small film. The fight scenes suffered from a little too much floating about and boring "look how cool we are" effects. Kaige seemed much better with The Emperor and the Assassin which bears a few similarities to this but without all the computer animated nonsense. This does for better or worse seem to be the direction mainstream Chinese film is headed so let's just hang out until it goes away. That said the film may have worked better on the big screen, but I missed it and I'll just learn to live with that fact.