Tai Hang shan shang

History can be understood in the statistics: during eight years of Japanese occupation, 6 million Chinese defended, against 4 million Japanese. The Chinese were killed 60%, the Japanese only 10%. The Chinese army was never professional, heroic or efficient. A vulgar, distorted, ridiculous movie.

I just watched this DVD that I checked out from my local library. I was surprised that this film's rating is so low, Some of the Hollywood movies which have higher ratings are actually no better than this one. Therefore, I am rating it a 10. I didn't plan to write a comment, since there is only one bad comment, therefore, I am compelled to write down my review. I don't know anything about the director, but his skill is just as good as Steven Spielburg. I am very impressed. This truly is an epic war film. It is a pity that not many people have seen it.

There are not many people in the west knew about the eight years of anti-Japanese invasion war which happened in China during world war II, that is probably the reason why this film's rating is so low on here. After all, if you are not interested or don't know much about that part of history, then it would be hard for you to follow through.

The sound quality is very good if you have home theater system. And the score/music is excellent, it has the typical Hollywood epic war film taste if not better. That is very impressive. I have seen quite a few Chinese war films before which typically have some mediocre scores, but this one has the best score so far. When one sees soldiers got killed by the Japanese invaders with that dramatic music in the background, it makes one want to cry.

And the special effect is excellent, it is as good as "Saving private Ryan" if not better. You can see human body parts being blown away, a live Japanese soldier being forced to jump into the fire, a person crushed by a tank, people got cut by sharp knives, etc.

The cinematography is also excellent. The actors were also very good. I am very impressed by the short appearance of "Tony Leung Ka Fai", he is an Hongkong actor. He has never experienced what it was like during world war II in China, but his performance was solid. It made you believe as if he was really one of the officers in the communist army. I don't think that he has ever lived in mainland China for a long time, but he knows how to act as a mainlander. And his performance in the film called "Changhen ge" was also very good. He is such a versatile actor. The other actors were also very good, they let you forget that they were just acting, such as "Wang Wufu" as the Chinese leader "Zhu De". I was very impressed by the speech which he delivered at the beginning of the film. Unlike those typical Chinese communist propaganda, it actually sounds real, and elicits deep emotions from the audiences.

Almost all the previous anti-Japanese movies made from mainland China always concentrate on telling the audiences how good the Chinese communist party was, how its army was fighting hard against Japanese invaders while the kuomintang (nationalist) army was trying to run away from the enemy. This movie is different, it actually showed some heroic nationalist officers. Some of the kuomintang officers actually look normal, don't have the typical evil looks that you normally see in mainland Chinese movies. Also it has very few cliché. There was only one which an communist army officer got killed during a battle.

One minor thing, one of the soldiers guarding in front of "Zhu De"s room looks too cute, he looks more like a pop star instead of a soldier from a small rural town. His lips look so red, teeth look so white. Then Zhu De put the soldier's hands inside of his jacket to warm the soldier's hands, that seemed very fake.

Of course, most of the film is concentrated on telling audiences how brave the communist army was, it spent very little time on how the nationalist army was fighting their part of war. However, it actually had a scene of which a nationalist army commander fighting with other soldiers in the front line until he was killed. That kind of historical fact was never included in any mainland Chinese movies before. So that is a big improvement. Now that the Chinese nationalist party is only active in Taiwan, and due to their limited resources, they can never make an epic movie like this. I only hope that maybe one day when the communist party of China will no longer be the only political party in China, then someone can make another big epic movie such as this that will tell the other side of story of how the nationalist army fought during the eight long years of war against the Japanese invaders.

I typically don't write very long reviews, but this one truly touched my heart.

This film is not only bad, but insultingly so. Apparently there is some sort of online cover-up by the makers or some very patriotic fans of this film to stop any negative reviews from being written, so let's see how long this one lasts before they have it forcibly removed (again) for "abuse". This is not (unnamed communist regime), this is America, and we have the right to voice our opinions of awful films no matter what subject matter they cover.

Really, this big-budget world war 2 movie is nothing but white-washed (or should I say "red-washed") history in the form of communist propaganda. Sure, the Russians made lots of huge self-indulgent flicks like this about World War 2 (like we did), but at least they were competently made. This one feels like an expensive student film. The action scenes are ridiculously badly choreographed, directed, and animated. Computer animation involving the airplanes and bombs is 3rd rate, even worse than stuff you'll see on sci-fi channel. Everything aspect of the execution of the war scenes is amateurish and fake. The most hilarious moment has to be when a Japanese soldier steps on a land-mine and gets blown straight up at the camera, when it's obvious they just green-screened a guy kicking in place and in the editing just composited him in and scaled him up.

Some highlights of the battles include a guy getting the grenade pins pulled out of him after a fistfight, causing him to spontaneously combust, plus a guy getting shot slow-motion through a windshield. However, we've seen this all before... when it was called "Rambo III".

And what else do we see big-budget war movies for but the action, right? There's a few big battles, but not enough to make it worthwhile. It's bogged down by more than a few boring yak-yak scenes between various politicians and generals, but it's all shameless propaganda to make the Chinese communists look like this struggling sainted army and the Japanese look simultaneously like devils and completely incompetent. If we're to believe this film, the Japanese Imperial army was the most poorly led in the world, which makes the Chinese army's struggle a little less impressive, doesn't it?

I've seen some really good war movies. I've even seen some really good war movies that Asians made, namely Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War. This was nothing like that war movie I saw last year that brought me to my knees. Being a man of Chinese descent, I jumped at the thought of watching this movie, since it was about the struggle of my people during the Second World War. I was disappointed. While this movie would make good propaganda since it glorifies the Chinese Communists (who were arguably more useful in the Anti-Japanese War than the actual Chinese Army), it did not make much of a war movie. War movies are not supposed to have as much fluff as this one had. On the plus side, the battle scenes were downright brutal and the portrayal of General Zhu De was dead on. Sometimes, I have daydreamed playing Zhu De in a movie, since I am of Chinese descent. This portrayal was good, but otherwise, the movie will get a lukewarm review from me.

6/10. More of a propaganda film than a war film.