Honestly the film it self was not as bad as 1/10, if not for the brain-washing CCP propaganda, I'd probably given it a 2/10 -- 1 point more for the fair performances of Gong Li, Yu Rongguang, Wang Xueqi and Liu Xiaoning.
Ge You's character and performance were both awfully inconvincible, he was a joke in this film (even more hilarious than the product placement marketing of Yun Yan brand Chinese cigarettes). Ge You was born to be a comedian, thus any attempt in other genres would ultimately lost in vain.
It took me a while to believe that this was yet another Zhang Yimou/Gu Changwei film. The direction and cinematography were both disasters. It was funny how it even took the director Zhang Yimou himself a long time to take credit for this possibly one-of-his-worst film.
So the question is why? Why would they make such a piece of crap and publish it? The answer is simple yet sophisticated in its own way - politics.
First of all, The relation between mainland China and Taiwan is never friendly. And second, notice the time when this film was released - 1989, however strangely I couldn't find out the exact date when it's released; hence I guess it was right after or even during the infamous Tian'anmen massacre. The massacre was covered and defined by CCP as "a violent riot of a small group of people manipulated and oriented by foreign anti-China forces".
The CCP have always controlled the media and I guess it's probably why the exact release date is censored, only not to let me or any other people who are interested in this political swindle relates this film to the massacre. The terrorists factor in this film was obviously a metaphor of the so-called "anti-China forces".
CCP released this film only to show her people (as well as the Taiwanese) that the party is powerful enough to reign her regime, and that's disgusting to me since it's nothing but mental masturbation -- no different than a Nazi propaganda film -- or even worse, for Nazi propaganda films were never ridiculously affected with metaphors; the III Reich film makers under Goebbels' lead were at least masturbating with honesty and decency.
Ge You's character and performance were both awfully inconvincible, he was a joke in this film (even more hilarious than the product placement marketing of Yun Yan brand Chinese cigarettes). Ge You was born to be a comedian, thus any attempt in other genres would ultimately lost in vain.
It took me a while to believe that this was yet another Zhang Yimou/Gu Changwei film. The direction and cinematography were both disasters. It was funny how it even took the director Zhang Yimou himself a long time to take credit for this possibly one-of-his-worst film.
So the question is why? Why would they make such a piece of crap and publish it? The answer is simple yet sophisticated in its own way - politics.
First of all, The relation between mainland China and Taiwan is never friendly. And second, notice the time when this film was released - 1989, however strangely I couldn't find out the exact date when it's released; hence I guess it was right after or even during the infamous Tian'anmen massacre. The massacre was covered and defined by CCP as "a violent riot of a small group of people manipulated and oriented by foreign anti-China forces".
The CCP have always controlled the media and I guess it's probably why the exact release date is censored, only not to let me or any other people who are interested in this political swindle relates this film to the massacre. The terrorists factor in this film was obviously a metaphor of the so-called "anti-China forces".
CCP released this film only to show her people (as well as the Taiwanese) that the party is powerful enough to reign her regime, and that's disgusting to me since it's nothing but mental masturbation -- no different than a Nazi propaganda film -- or even worse, for Nazi propaganda films were never ridiculously affected with metaphors; the III Reich film makers under Goebbels' lead were at least masturbating with honesty and decency.