After flipping the bird to the Shaw Brothers assembly line in Hong Kong to set up his own Grand Motion Picture Company in Taiwan, director Li Han-hsiang decided his opening statement shouldn’t just compete with his former bosses. It should make Hollywood’s bloated historical epics look like a local high school theater production.

The result? An absolute monolith of mid-century Asian cinema. This was a massive, 120,000-extra, 334-day shoot, a movie so big that it premiered as a colossal two-part epic released months apart. The version in the 88 Films release is the condensed, 2.5-hour omnibus edit prepared for a later re-release. While the complete, multi-hour mega-cut is tragically lost to time, this version remains a gorgeous testament to classic filmmaking on a scale that will make your jaw drop.

The kind and noble King of Yue, Goujian (Zhao Lei), finds his kingdom thoroughly subjugated and himself thrown into a degrading, years-long exile by the sadistic, lecherous King of Wu, Fucha. When Goujian is finally allowed to crawl back to his ruined home, he doesn’t just plan a standard-issue counter-attack. Instead, he orchestrates a twenty-year-long game of court intrigue, psychological warfare and total economic destabilization.

The ultimate weapon in this multi-decade chess match isn’t a massive division of chariots, but rather a young woman named Hsi Shih (Jiang Qing). Ostensibly sent to the Wu palace as a submissive gift of fealty to satisfy King Fucha’s legendary lust, she is actually a highly trained political operative. Her mission? Infiltrate the royal bedchamber, weaponize her own staggering beauty and slowly rot the Wu government from the inside out while her king builds a secret army back home.

If you come to this expecting the kinetic, acrobatic swordplay of late-sixties King Hu or the razor-sharp martial arts choreography that would soon define the region’s output, you are going to get left behind in the palace corridors. This is a massive, slow-burning period piece where the primary weapons are whispered rumors, political double-bluffs and the heavy silence of impending betrayal.

Did this thing have a big budget? You better believe it. The sheer scale of the old-school production design—with enormous, practical palace sets, sprawling armies that stretch to the horizon without a single digital pixel, and stunning widescreen compositions—is breathtaking. The 4K digital restoration rescues the film’s vibrant palette from decades of fading, letting the ornate costumes and massive crowd scenes pop with the kind of grand cinematic illusion that no longer exists.

If you miss the days when epic meant thousands of actual humans standing in a field wearing hand-stitched armor, you need this on your shelf. 88 Films has absolutely knocked this one out of the park for collectors. You get a brand-new 4K remaster of the movie, an interview with Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns, a trailer and a restoration comparison. Buy it from MVD.