General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Great Magician (大魔术师)

The Great Magician (Daai mo seut si, 大魔術師) is a 2011 Hong Kong–mainland China co-production comedy-drama directed by Derek Yee Tung-Shing (爾冬升), starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Lau Ching-wan, and Zhou Xun in a story of magic, warlord politics, and a love triangle set in Beijing in 1916, after the death of Yuan Shikai.¹^•² The film adapts a novel of the same title by Zhang Haifan and blends magic, romance, comedy, mystery, and action.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Directed by Derek Yee; written by Yee, Chun Tin-Nam (秦天南), and Lau Ho-Leung (刘浩良), from Zhang Haifan's original novel¹^•⁵
Principal cast	Tony Leung Chiu-wai as magician Zhang Xian, Lau Ching-wan as warlord Lei Daniu (Lei Bully), Zhou Xun as Liu Yin¹^•⁵
Release dates	Mainland China 22 December 2011; Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore 12 January 2012; Taiwan 3 February 2012¹^•⁶^•⁷
Running time and languages	128 minutes; Mandarin and Cantonese¹
Production	Co-produced by Emperor Motion Pictures and Bona Film Group on an estimated US$15 million budget⁸^•⁵
Mainland box office	¥174 million (1.74亿) in 2012, ranked 8th among domestic films for that year⁹
Awards	Best Costume and Make Up Design at the 32nd Hong Kong Film Awards (2013), to Yee Chung Man and Dai Mei Ling; Zhou Xun nominated for Best Actress²

Spoilers

Story and setting

The film is set in 1916, shortly after the death of Yuan Shikai, when China had fragmented into territories held by competing warlords while Japan watched the country covetously.² At Tianqiao, the gathering place for street performers in Beijing, a mysterious conjurer, Zhang Xian (Zhang Hsien), played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, arrives and amazes audiences with dazzling, elegantly performed magic.²^•¹⁰

His shows draw the attention of the warlord General Lei Daniu (Commander Lei, "Bully Lei"), played by Lau Ching-wan, who wants to please his forcibly taken seventh wife, Liu Yin (Zhou Xun), and brings her to the performances.² What the general does not know is that Zhang and Liu Yin were once lovers: Zhang left years before to study magic abroad, and the awaiting Liu Yin was seized by the warlord.³^•⁴ A plot summary adds further layers: Liu Yin's father, a famous magician, is held captive and tortured for the secret of a mystical scroll said to hold the key to mind control, and revolutionaries seek to use the conjurer's access to the general for an assassination plot.⁴^•¹¹

To reclaim Liu Yin from Lei, Zhang cooperates with southern revolutionaries against the general, but discovers that Lei is not the villain rumor makes him out to be, while Liu Yin gradually develops feelings for Lei.² All the shadowy dealings actually stem from Lei's butler, Butler Liu (Wu Gang), who conspires with the Japanese in a scheme to restore the monarchy.²^•³ To sabotage the butler's restoration plan and win back Liu Yin's heart, Zhang stages an unprecedented magic performance.²

Production and collaboration

Casting and history. The film marked the third collaboration between Tony Leung and Derek Yee and their first in more than 20 years, following The Lunatics (1986), Yee's first feature as director with Leung in the lead, and The People's Hero (1988).⁸^•¹² It was the first Leung–Lau Ching-wan pairing on screen in some time, the two having previously worked together on the 1998 thriller The Longest Nite.¹³

The picture was announced in March 2011 as the head of Emperor Motion Pictures' new slate, co-produced with Bona Film Group, and described then as a period mystery about an illusionist in the early 1900s who uses magic to save his country and win back the woman he loves.⁸ Production began in Beijing, with a media event held while shooting was underway; the film shot at the Beijing Huairou film and television base from March to June 2011.³ Veteran action director Jiang Daohai, who had faced Leung on camera in Yee's People's Hero 23 years earlier, joined as magic director to design the conjuring sequences.³

The supporting cast is long and veteran-heavy, including Yan Ni as Lei's domineering third wife, Paul Chun as Liu Yin's father Liu Wan-yao, Lam Suet, Alex Fong Chung-Sun as a rival magician, and cameos by Daniel Wu and, in a hook-handed warlord role, director Tsui Hark.¹^•¹¹^•⁵ Action direction was credited to Stephen Tung Wai.¹⁰

Box office and reception

The film opened in mainland China on 22 December 2011.¹ In its first four days of release in the 9–15 January 2012 week (the Hong Kong release date), it took ¥73.1 million, displacing the four-week champion The Flowers of War at the top of the mainland chart and drawing more than 2.1 million admissions.¹⁴ It crossed ¥100 million on 17 January 2012, becoming the first film of 2012 to reach that mark in the mainland, and finished the year at ¥174 million, eighth among domestic releases.¹⁵^•⁹

Outside China, theatrical returns were modest: Box Office Mojo records $884,572 in Hong Kong, $540,499 in Malaysia, and $305,558 in Singapore, for $1,738,798 outside the mainland, while worldwide theatrical returns totaled at least $27.32 million, since the film grossed $27.32 million in China in the first half of 2012.¹⁶^•²²^•²³ A review-based account notes the film grossed about $27.2 million at the Chinese box office in the first half of 2012 against an estimated $15 million budget, and was then the highest-grossing Chinese-language film behind eight Hollywood blockbusters, but apart from two festival screenings it never reached European or American theaters.¹⁷

Reception on the mainland was mixed: on Douban, more than 166,000 users rate the film 6.5 out of 10, with 49.5 percent at three stars.¹ Reviewers abroad were similarly divided. The lovehkfilm review found the picture amusing and intriguing before it became overstuffed, with the last third resolving matters through audience-pleasing star turns, but praised the Leung–Lau interplay.¹⁰ The Cinema Online review credited the film's second half "like a charm" to the rapport between the quick-witted Zhang and the brusque Lei, while the SBS review judged that Yee's talent kept the plates spinning as the show itself crashed, calling the result a lightweight period romance cum political thriller.¹⁸^•¹¹ At the 32nd Hong Kong Film Awards in 2013 the film won Best Costume and Make Up Design for Yee Chung Man and Dai Mei Ling, and Zhou Xun was nominated for Best Actress; at the 19th Beijing College Student Film Festival, Yan Ni was named most popular actress among students.²^•⁶

Place in Derek Yee's career and festival circuit

For Yee, a former Shaw Brothers actor turned director and screenwriter, The Great Magician followed the China-Hong Kong co-production Triple Tap (2010) and continued the string of mainland co-productions that defined his later career.¹⁹ Reviewers note its place in an early-2010s wave of commercially successful Hong Kong-mainland co-productions: in 2012 alone, The Silent War (Tony Leung), The Great Magician, and The Bullet Vanishes (Lau Ching-wan) all did strong mainland business, and the film has been likened in tone to Jiang Wen's Let the Bullets Fly and to Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues.²⁰^•⁴^•¹¹

On the festival circuit it appeared in competition or selection at the 16th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in South Korea, the 12th Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland, the 14th Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, the 2nd San Francisco Hong Kong Film Festival, the 11th Dallas Asian Film Festival, and the 5th Amsterdam Asian Film Festival, and was screened for buyers at Cannes.²^•²¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026