Jian dang wei ye

Review: What an epic movie! This film certainly looked great and the costumes and scenery is superb but I didn't have a clue about what was going on. I didn't know who was who or what was where. The small captions on the bottom of the screen and the subtitles didn't help and the different story lines just made the whole movie hard to follow. Its a shame, because the acting is great and the I did feel a sense of intensity throughout the film but it's hard to keep up with the epic, political concept which changed China forever. The director over complicated the concept and he even added a love story, so there is way too many things going on at once. It reminded me a lot of the Founding Of The Republic, which was also extremely hard to follow and I personally gave up watching after a while. They could have easily split this film into 2 movies, so the director could have concentrated on different elements of he storyline. Anyway, although it looks great, the storyline is all over the place and I personally lost the plot. Disappointing!

Round-Up: After watching a few Oriental movies, I did recognise a few faces throughout this movie but I still found it hard to follow. The movie was directed by Sanping Han who also directed the confusing Founding Of The Republic with Jianxin Huang. Sanping Han has produced some top movies like Shaolin, Confucius, the great Let The Bullets Fly, the Karate Kid and Mission Impossible 3, so he's certainly got experience when it comes to big movies but he really did over complicate this one. I have to commend the directors on there efforts and the scale of this film, especially in terms the huge cast and the amazing cinematography but from an entertainment perspective, there is just too much to concentrate on.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their history/dramas starring Chow Yun- Fat, Angelababy, Daniel Wu, John Woo, Andy Lau, Simon Yam, Chao Deng, Xun Zhou and Kun Chen. 3/10

The BAD. A prequel to Founding Of A Republic, and merely an another attempt at glorifying The Communist Chinese Party for its part in bring China under one banner.Personally this film would be a peace of garbage if it wasn't for the Chinese Super Stars that starred in this film.

The GOOD I enjoy the action sequence when the First Civil War erupted during the warlord era. But right after that the film was more Politically Motivated at making the CCP,(Chinese Communist Party), look good and bashing others. Jackie Chan's 1911 was more easily enjoyable then this Communist Propaganda film. As soon as I see a name of one of China's worst leaders,(Man responsible for the failed Great Leap Forward), I just knew it was gonna go down hill really bad. In the End the film was good for battle scenes and for it's nostalgic imperial clothing and 1911 post clothing that people wore back then. Other than that, this film was a Communist film all the way.

In 1900's and 1911 and on wards China was a country that had a revolution movement that was a ticking time bomb just waiting to be lit and explode. The Chinese Civil War ended with one victor. The Communist won. And China is the way that is today.

Just like the movie that came in about few years ago, propagating the government, and how they had established the "new China", this is a documentary film, trying to deliver the history at that time. I see that many of the reviews said that there were not a storyline throughout the film, and can't see the connections between them. However, as a historical documentary, I consider the film without a storyline, but rather, a timeline. The timeline went from 1909 (I think) to before WW2. I in fact do not consider this movie boring, and believe that it has its positive sides. Unlike some other government productions, this movie is rather subjective, with not too much intentions to propagate the govenment. Again, it was meant to go over the whole history of the communist govenment in this period of time. But some recommendations about the film, if you aren't Chinese, don't watch the movie, if you hate the govenment, I mean, by hate, don't watch it, if you do not know anything and don't want to know about the historical figures of China, don't watch the movie. I didn't find the film extremely interesting, but it briefly helped me go over the history of China.

This film starts with the 1911 xinhai revolution and quickly goes over the chaos of the early republic and its trouble with Yuan shi-kai. The May 4th movement is portrayed as the touchstone to the founding of the communist party (certainly a lot of the future leaders of the party started getting involved in politics at this time). This could have been a much longer film covering more in depth coverage of the personalities of this time and still have my interest because of my study of Chinese history. For a general audience this film may have too many characters they know nothing about and find confusing. Even more so if you are not Chinese or a student of this time in history. How many people know about the Japanese occupation of the Shandong peninsula and its impact on Chinese thinking about the west? If you do have some knowledge of the people and time in China during the years covered in this film you will enjoy this movie.

I don't think this movie is intended for non-Chinese, who weren't taught that history (1910-1949) in China. Here is the logic. The Qing Dynasty, a symbol of Feudalism, had already resigned. The Beiyang government was good at selling nation's interest and shooting at students. Sun Yat-sen was too fragile to lead China. KMP was totally corrupted and lead the whole country into disaster. So only CCP could represent Chinese people's interest and lead China. (Don't raise your hands. Recite them and we'll have tests tomorrow.) Such series(foundation of party/government) are just a film version of history books.