Lin Ching-Tai plays a tribal chief in “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale,” a Taiwanese historical story set in 1930. Credit Well Go USA

“Fight until our blood runs out! The heavenly home of our ancestors, here we come!” That battle cry prefaces a desperate, suicidal run across a fragile bridge by aboriginal warriors to confront the Japanese Army in the Taiwanese historical epic “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale.” Its words embody the primitive philosophy of warfare glorified by this unabashedly nationalistic film.

Directed by Wei Te-Sheng (the 2008 Asian blockbuster “Cape No. 7”), “Warriors of the Rainbow,” which cost $23 million, is reputedly the most expensive Taiwanese film ever made. The film released in the United States is an abridgement of the original two-part, four-hour version.

Its story is based on the little-known Wushe Incident in 1930, when 300 warriors of the Seediq, an aboriginal people centered in Taiwan’s interior highlands, rose up against their Japanese oppressors. A brief historical preface explains that in 1895, the island of Taiwan was ceded by China to Japan, which subdued the native population and turned them into demoralized, alcoholic slaves. Steeped in mysticism, tribal folklore and Asian machismo, the film is a two-and-a-half-hour bloodbath that fetishizes the machete as the ultimate human slicing machine.

The Seediq believed that “a true man dies on the battlefield,” that anyone who tried to enter the heavenly hunting ground without blood on his hands would be turned away, declares a solemn narrator. The ideal Seediq male, Mouna Rudo (Lin Ching-Tai), a tribal chief, is a wise, fearless warrior who heeds ancient traditions. The youthful Mouna (played by Da Ching) is shown receiving a painful facial tattoo certifying his first decapitation. The ritual makes him a Seediq Bale, a hero able to cross a rainbow bridge to the ancestral mountain summit.

A scene of a mass suicide of Seediq wives portrays the ideal Seediq woman as a mother who would hang herself and send her sons to fight and die rather than be a burden on her husband during wartime.

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Despite its gore, “Warriors of the Rainbow” doesn’t feel especially visceral. Maybe it’s Ricky Ho’s wistful, swooning music that strongly echoes James Horner’s score for “Titanic.” Maybe it’s the rainbows too frequently glimpsed in the region’s misty mountains and waterfalls.

In the incident that ignites the revolt, an abusive Japanese policeman is nearly beaten to death. Mouna Rudo, who had advised acquiescence to the status quo, is pressured to change his stance. The rebels’ first salvo is a massacre at a Japanese sporting event.

Like Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto,” “Warriors of the Rainbow” finds honor in savagery. If its Japanese soldiers repeatedly dismiss the Seediq as “savages” (the word is usually spat with contempt), the film admires the purity of their rage and their willingness to die in a tribal culture that believes in the cleansing powers of bloodshed.

The tantrum-throwing Japanese general who leads the final crackdown is a grotesque caricature of a military martinet. He becomes so enraged at the Seediqs’ resilience that he unleashes poison gas as a weapon. It doesn’t stop them, and by the end he is a grudging admirer of Mouna Rudo, whose tiny force stands up to the general’s well-equipped army of thousands.

Despite the movie’s considerable visual splendor, the pacing of “Warriors of the Rainbow” is clumsy, its battle scenes chaotic and its computer effects (especially of a fire that ravages the Seediq hunting forest) cheesy. The acting consists mostly of comic-book glowers and grimaces. As the war drags on, “Warriors of the Rainbow” outstays its welcome. I’ve never seen more severed heads in a film and cared less.

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