What could have been a well-explored tale about the horrible conditions women suffered during the early eras of China and the historical background, ends up becoming a tedious, boring, and messy approach which takes away from it's purpose and message.
Director Peter Chan has good intentions to explore the story about the themes of womanhood, justice, politics and the tragic era during the early ages of China. However, the storytelling, interior atmosphere and structure doesn't do a service to it's themes because it kind of goes all over the place. Resulting it into becoming a messy, unbalanced and repetitive story that struggles to maintain it's atmosphere and tension. Included to be shoved in with poor production designs that fails to reflect it's time period and poor pacing.
Zhang Ziyi comes a solid performance as she is doing her best to what she is displaying and offering for the character and story. However, the characters weren't interesting at all as many of the characters development and engagement felt too disoriented and one-noted to fully connect. Making it difficult to believe many of the characters motivations and ideas when poor development, some bad acting, and bad dialogue is presented. It makes it bland, predictable, and at times, unintentionally hilarious in the worst ways possible.
The editing is one of the worst aspects as the editing feels choppy, messy and all over the place. As if the editors had no idea how to make a movie. This is one aspect I dislike about Modern Chinese cinema. Oftentimes they try to replicate the Hollywood and box-office approach and many times, they come off as poorly made, annoying and pure embarrassment. Art-house independent Chinese movies are a must need of support.
I am aware a continuation of this movie will occur to explore more of it's characters and development but a movie like this doesn't need to be that long, and could easily become one movie. Overall, one of the most tedious and overlong movies I have seen in some time.
