Kingdom: The Flame Of Destiny is streaming on Netflix.
Filmmaker Shinsuke Sato is staying the course with his sprawling action adventure saga that is Kingdom, based on the work of mangaka Yasuhisa Hara and with production banner CREDEUS Inc. in his wheelhouse. With a fourth film in toe, Netflix subscribers now have a chance to run the current three-film course leading up to the latest installment, Kingdom: The Flame Of Destiny, segueing to the next phase of Sato’s Warring States epic with Kento Yamazaki, Ryo Yoshizawa and Kanna Hashimoto each reprising their roles. Also among the returning cast are actors Nana Seino and Masami Nagasawa, and Takao Osawa, the latter in what continues to be the most pivotal role of the whole franchise, possibly.
To get the gist of what I’m saying, and if you haven’t done so yet, I recommend watching the first two installments. Otherwise, Kingdom: Flame Of Destiny picks up right from the events of the previous film as King Eisei (Yoshizawa) and the Qin state is now faced with a threat even greater than what they battled in the Dakan plains. The bloodthirsty Zhao army has begun its incursion, and with burgeoning commander Shin (Yamazaki) away and training under legendary General Ohki (Osawa) and other key generals and troops away on an expedition, Eisei and his cabinet are forced to congregate with Chancellor Shobunkun’s (Masahiro Takashima) political rival, Ryofui (Koichi Sato) and his team to appoint a new commander-in-chief to oversee the Qin army on the battlefield.
This moment serves ancillary to the exclusive one-on-one between Ohki and Eisei, flashing back seven years earlier into the darker origins of Eisei, his past as a slave in a village run by the Zhao state, and his crucial escape with the help of a black marketeer named Shika (Anne Watanabe). The second half of the film gradually shifts to the Battle of Bayo as both Qin and Zhao armies, following Ohki and Shin’s timely arrival back to Eisei’s palace, with focus solely on Shin and his 100-man battalion under Ohki’s direction.
Sato does incredible at weaving the nexus of events between all three films as we learn more about Eisei. You can thank Ohki’s inquisitiveness as a tribute to not only his long game style approach, but as an answer to whether or not he’s actually friend or foe; Kingdom did a hell of a job leaving that one up in the air. Alas, it certainly takes awhile for things to get moving in Kingdom: The Flame Of Destiny, but you’re rewarded soon enough with a much more complete picture of who Eisei really is, a key character development on which we can platform our observation of Ohki and his intentions.
Moreover, the film almost instantly foreshadows the coming of the Zhao army as a likely act of retaliation following a massacre that occurred many years earlier, along with a plot-twisty murder incident discussed later on that serves to signal the arrival of a brand new foe in the form of Hoken (Koji Kikkawa, Rurouni Kenshin), a man who for all intents and purposes can be best described as “a result of a horrifyingly pure ‘art of war'”, as a daunted Shobunkun states at one point.
Where the first half of Kingdom: The Flame Of Destiny sets the stage, it truly is the second half in which Sato really lets it all out on screen. It’s an action-packed thrillride as Shin and his two vice commanders including Priestess-dancing swordswoman Kyoukai (Seino) take to the battlefield in a strategic attack on the Zhao camp, fueled by a roaring musical score from composer Kohei Chida who also worked on the last two Kingdom installments, as well as several other Sato-directed features like Bleach and Death Note: Light Up The New World, and sprawling action set pieces and sequences under the stewardship of Yuji Shimomura, a recurring film cohort to Sato and a renowned action director who has also grown his craft into the director’s seat on occasion.
Actor Hashimoto gets a little more screentime in this chapter following Far And Away in the role of Karoyuten who now serves as a member of Eisei’s strategic counsel, who also gets to observe the battlefield alongside fellow chief strategist, Moki. Theirs is a sweeping birds-eye view of the numbers on both sides with divisions parted left and right of one another with massive central battalions facing each other as the generals all calculate their next moves in succession, including Zhao general Fuki (Ainosuke Kataoka).
The emergence of Hoken, and other characters like the revered Lord Riboku (Shun Oguri) add to the brewing intrigue of what lies ahead in the upcoming fourth installment, Kingdom: The Return Of The Great General, with a cliffhanger primed to set up, among other possible bookenders, an explosive and revenge-driven showdown years in the making between two Guandao-wielding giants of war.
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