Checking in at $20 million, Chen Kaige's historical epic The Emperor and the Assassin is the most expensive Asian film ever produced, writes David Parkinson.

Much has been made of its length, complexity and opulence. But what is most fascinating about it is the manner in which Chen draws on range of cultural influences to explore themes that are quintessentially Chinese.

Divided into five chapters, the action takes some following. In the third century B.C., China was divided into seven kingdoms. However, Ying Zheng (Li Xuejian) believes he has a heavenly mandate to unite them around his own state of Qin. In order to lure Yan into war, he devises a plan with his former concubine, Lady Zhao (Gong Li), in which she will escape with Yan's hostaged prince (Sun Zhou) and plot an assassination attempt, which Zheng can then use as a pretext for invasion.

However, Zheng's victories have prompted megalomanic tendencies and while he's conducting a palace purge, Lady Zhao comes to realise the extent of his tyranny, as she witnesses the devastation of her own homeland. Moreover, she has fallen in love with the hired assassin, Jing Ke (Zhang Fengyi), who has disavowed violence after driving a blind girl to suicide by the slaughter of her family. But, if Zheng is to be stopped, Jing's own honour will have to be sacrificed.

With sumptuous cinematography by Zhao Fei and meticulously recreated sets by Tu Juhua, this has all the formal rigour that has become the Fifth Generation's trademark. Yet, there's a danger that such splendour is edging towards pictorialism, especially bearing in mind the rougher, readier style of such Sixth Generation films as Xiao Wu and Shower.

The performances, though passionate, are equally stylised, with the more intense and intimate sequences evoking the emotional timbre of Noh drama. However, this is in keeping with the film's magpie approach, as there is also a Shakespearean feel to the proceedings, which is reinforced by the fact the battle scenes owe much to Akira Kurosawa's Ran (which was a bowdlerisation of King Lear) and Kagemusha.

Like Kurosawa, Chen seems to have borrowed from the Western (a genre obsessed with the forging of a nation), with Jing bearing the force of moral rectitude that comes from being a reluctant hero, who will only renege on his vow to combat a greater evil. Considering this theme of national destiny, it's surely no coincidence, therefore, that the scene depicting the corpses stewn across the Zhao battlefield recalls both the Atlanta depot sequence in Gone with the Wind and the post-battle segment in Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky.

Yet for all its historical significance, this is also a film with contemporary resonance. Echoing Zhang Yimou's Not One Less, Chen laments the deleterious influence of the current consumerist boom, in which greed and ambition have come to replace integrity and duty. But, the most powerful subtext is the courageous criticism of Beijing's increasingly bellicose attitude to Taiwan, which many regard as the last obstacle to a new Chinese unity.