The reviews for this movie are too much plagiarized by US propaganda (rating this as 1) and Chinese propaganda (rating it as 10). If you take an unbiased view from a normal Chinese people, it's just a rather average movie. Hey, let's rate a movie based on its merit, the impression it gives people and so on, not just by politics!
The initial scenes are a bit dull and disconnected with the whole story. The film fails to tell the story of Tao Chengzhang (the guy with the bomb, later get murdered) at all so these scenes should be cut-off completely, just a waste of minutes.
After that it went quite fine with the story of Yuan Shikai (Chow Yun- fat) and Cai E (Andy Lau), it's quite touching to see General Cai could barely stand but still directs the victory over Yuan who elected himself as the emperor. And the Mao Zedong (Ye Liu) line is also OK and quite touching.
The May fourth movement part is a performed very well. For a Chinese, it reminded of a story the government often fails to tell. The tensions with the Japanese about the invasion of Shandong, the government's inability to make diplomatic maneuvers, and the fanatic approach of the students. I would say that's a nice historical lesson to take, especially in nowadays China where student movement is mostly a banned topic (because of the 89' Tiananmen square accident). Some of the speeches of Chen Duxiu (Feng Yuanzheng) are well carried out indeed, that it feels like the audience in the film were really convinced by him and were fully supporting his ideas.
However, the government side could be strengthened a bit. It talks about Wellington Koo (Daoming Chen) and his diplomatic efforts, but these were cut too heavily so the full story was not told very clearly.
Then the final scenes are not so good. The story lacks a climax and it looks to have ended without any major thing happening. OK the CCP formed, secretly while being hunted down by the police but so what? That ending can definitely be strengthened quite a bit. A few scenes on the things that happened in the next years, or a mere history time-line will make the epic feeling much better.
Overall, the film is ambitious in trying to condense 10 years of history into a mere 2 hours. But that turns out to be a bit too ambitious so in the end many things are told by just hand-waving. It could be made better by cutting off some of the less relevant scenes and making the main plot more concentrated on a few major characters (e.g., Yuan Shikai, Cai E, Mao Zedong, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao). But in general, the cast is good most of the time and at least the told historical facts are accurate (of course there're a lot of omitted trivia, e.g., Chen Duxiu went too often to night clubs and was sacked by the Peking university because he was found fighting for a prostitute). So if somebody is paying (e.g. the Chinese government) for the tickets, it's worthy to see it for free. But I won't pay to watch it, so a good strategy for the CCP would be to make it freely available online, after they've netted the 8 billion box office gross by the left-pocket, right-pocket trick.
The initial scenes are a bit dull and disconnected with the whole story. The film fails to tell the story of Tao Chengzhang (the guy with the bomb, later get murdered) at all so these scenes should be cut-off completely, just a waste of minutes.
After that it went quite fine with the story of Yuan Shikai (Chow Yun- fat) and Cai E (Andy Lau), it's quite touching to see General Cai could barely stand but still directs the victory over Yuan who elected himself as the emperor. And the Mao Zedong (Ye Liu) line is also OK and quite touching.
The May fourth movement part is a performed very well. For a Chinese, it reminded of a story the government often fails to tell. The tensions with the Japanese about the invasion of Shandong, the government's inability to make diplomatic maneuvers, and the fanatic approach of the students. I would say that's a nice historical lesson to take, especially in nowadays China where student movement is mostly a banned topic (because of the 89' Tiananmen square accident). Some of the speeches of Chen Duxiu (Feng Yuanzheng) are well carried out indeed, that it feels like the audience in the film were really convinced by him and were fully supporting his ideas.
However, the government side could be strengthened a bit. It talks about Wellington Koo (Daoming Chen) and his diplomatic efforts, but these were cut too heavily so the full story was not told very clearly.
Then the final scenes are not so good. The story lacks a climax and it looks to have ended without any major thing happening. OK the CCP formed, secretly while being hunted down by the police but so what? That ending can definitely be strengthened quite a bit. A few scenes on the things that happened in the next years, or a mere history time-line will make the epic feeling much better.
Overall, the film is ambitious in trying to condense 10 years of history into a mere 2 hours. But that turns out to be a bit too ambitious so in the end many things are told by just hand-waving. It could be made better by cutting off some of the less relevant scenes and making the main plot more concentrated on a few major characters (e.g., Yuan Shikai, Cai E, Mao Zedong, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao). But in general, the cast is good most of the time and at least the told historical facts are accurate (of course there're a lot of omitted trivia, e.g., Chen Duxiu went too often to night clubs and was sacked by the Peking university because he was found fighting for a prostitute). So if somebody is paying (e.g. the Chinese government) for the tickets, it's worthy to see it for free. But I won't pay to watch it, so a good strategy for the CCP would be to make it freely available online, after they've netted the 8 billion box office gross by the left-pocket, right-pocket trick.