Innacurate - Hatred of Western Europe
Added 10/15/2009
All you have to do is look up Marco Polo in Wikipedia and you will see this show gets its history completely wrong. The actual history is much more intresting, this thing is not.
Also, every other line is some attack on western europe. It can't go more than a couple of minutes without some put down of the west. Apparently the author hates europeans. Oh, and he also hate christians, as that is constantly mocked (typical hollywood cliches of priests, etc.)
Someone should actually make a decent movie about Marco Polo, this is just a Hollywood, european hating film.
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Hollywood sensationalism...that may not go far enough!
Added 5/24/2009
One lazy Sunday I drifted into watching this mini-series. My first impression was that it was a silly, romanticized Hollywood treatment of a classic historical account (admittedly, one that I hadn't personally read at the time).
And, yes, seeing Brian Dennehy cast as Kublai Khan made it especially hard to buy into the treatment! But the sets, costumes and storyline were all quite extraordinary. A lot of effort obviously went into the production , which was made in China with a substantial budget.
But many things just didn't sit right with me: the magnificence of Kublai Kahn's court, his cities, the military technology, and a romance between Marco and a Chinese princess? And then the Kahn charges Marco with delivering the princess to the other side of the planet???
I watched it to the end...and then ran to Amazon to find a book to get the facts. The book I found was The Travels of Marco Polo: Edited by Peter Harris (Everyman's Library (Cloth)).
Amazing news...this "sensationalized" mini-series barely scratches the surface of the astounding things Marco Polo reports in his 700 year old tale of travel!
His adventures, many of which are dramatized in this DVD, seemed absolutely unbelievable...until I found most of them proven true in the book... including the story about delivering the princess.
And the romance? Well, I suspect that Marco left quite a few personal facts out of his life in China. So kudos to the scriptwriters who wrote a little love between the lines of his historic journey.
Bottom line - a great film for couples or anyone with an interest in history.
If you just watch the film, marvel that there's more truth in this account than there is fiction! And if you want to know the truth, treat yourself to the book.
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Marco Who ?
Added 12/21/2008
"realistic" ? "true story" ? oh come oooooon......Marco Polo's journey, together with his father and brother(and not alone) was a business venture, he didn't set out to convert the Khan(a man his father knew since he'd been there before..), neither did it have anything to do with priests or monks on a journey to convert the "idolators" ...this film his about as accurate as Gary Cooper's in the 1930's....history is so marvellous yet americans seem to believe it is far too complicated for anyone of us to comprehend, so they simplify it into cliché's(many of them purveyed by movies in the first place)ask a pretty boy to prance through asia and let an irishman play Kublai Khan....on second thought : I prefer the Gary Cooper film, at least thàt one wasn't pretentious in his supposed "truthfullness"....
2 out of 5 people found this helpful.
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Two reviews
Added 3/26/2008
Two reviews come to mind for this one: 1) "Low budget, low energy, big yawn"; and, 2) "Brian Dennehy as Kublai Khan." They tried, others have tried, no one's done justice to M. Polo since M. Polo first told his story. This one throws in some sex and B.D. Wong gets a martial arts airing. Two stars, one for each review.
1 out of 4 people found this helpful.
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Marco Polo
Added 3/25/2008
Understanding that this person, Marco Polo, may never have seen China as he said he did, I fully enjoyed this story. It was very believable as well as interesting.
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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