The first trailer for Chow Yun Fat's new period epic The Assassins has just landed, and frankly it looks pretty standard fare. Directed by first-timer Zhao Linshan and produced by the same team behind Zhang Yimou's The Flowers Of War, it tells the story of Han Dynasty Prime Minister Cao Cao (Chow), who in his twilight years only grew in power and threatened to take over the Han Empire. The story also deals with a pair of young lovers, played by Liu Yi Fei and Japanese actor Tamaki Hiroshi, who are snatched from a prison camp and trained to become deadly assassins. While the premise sounds intriguing enough this first trailer shows us precious little that we haven't seen in dozens of similar medieval war epics over the past decade. There is someone clomping around in a full suit of armour, which is a rare novelty, but little else really stands out. That said, WellGo USA has already bought the film for North American distribution and the film hits theatres in China at the end of September, so we don't have too long to wait before we can test the mettle of The Assassins for ourselves.