Feng huo fang fei

This is not a film with lots of action, but instead one of quiet heroism that touches the heart. I believe it is based on true historical events, which makes it even more compelling. The actors, particularly the one who plays Ying, a simple woman with enormous courage, do a very good job. Thumbs up for this one.

Jack Turner (Emile Hirsch) is one of surviving Jimmy Doolittle raiders. He is being debriefed by his superiors. He recounts crash landing in China and rescued by local widower mother Ying (Liu Yifei). Her soldier husband was killed in Nanjing.

This is a Chinese film with an American star. There was a rash of them with Chinese money trying to make a Hollywood movie. It's surprisingly fine. The CGI green screen is a little outdated. The writing could be better. The romance is unnecessary and feels especially forced. There is better romantic potential with the teacher but I wouldn't want that either. There is some good tension but I would have liked to get moving sooner. This needs to be more of an escape road movie. This is a good first draft but it needs some refining.

Based on true facts, it is a very reasonable film, but despite the romantic and dramatic plot, it is too documental.

I recommend it for its historical value.

While the box office is overrun by superhero films, it's refreshing to see a film that grounds itself more directly in humanity. "The Chinese Widow" is a beautifully shot, often endearing film that features particularly strong performances by Yifei Liu and Fangcong Li. It is a moving story that deals with incredible sacrifice and one that may bring the viewer to question their definition of heroism. If you want to see something more profound than a run-of-the-mill blockbuster, "The Chinese Widow" is definitely worth a watch.

Some of the Chinese dialog didn't feel right, normal or correct for any Chinese speaking to each other, especially this film is about a bunch of villagers living in a remote mountainous area. No kid would say "Fu-Chin (father)" to his mother, but would say "Dad (Die)" or "BaBa", "Fu-Chin" is too literal and popular enough to be used in a mountain village in China. There are so many incorrect and wrong use of the Chinese language in this film's dialog. Those words used in this film simply felt more like highly educated people living in the big cities, these people in this film instead were living in a remote poor village in the mountain area, most of them would be illiterate since its around 1945. So every time, when the Chinese characters speaking, it's just not right but only bad screenplay writers would use such theater language that were not spoken by realistic Chinese people in their daily lives.

I often felt that most of the Chinese screenplay writers never could script correct and normal dialog speaking among the common Chinese people, every word just felt staged, like watching actors speaking on a theater stage. They cannot separate, distinguish, or truly grasp the realistic words according to the locations, the era, the time frames, the age differences, the education backgrounds, male or female gender differences....but just lazily and carelessly used the same format to write the scripts' dialog.

This is the main reason why most of the time I could only give lower ratings to most Chinese movies, because they just felt false and absolutely ridiculous.

This film was made, produced and released before the Japanese Prime Minister, Abe, revisited China a few days ago, and the Chinese Communist higher-ups suddenly changed their attitude to the Japanese government from hateful animosity to brotherhood love and friendship. If this film release date in China was scheduled when Prime Minister Abe's visiting date, then it would be definitely banned. Innocent Chinese villagers were viciously shot or chopping head off by the Japanese are now so unpopular and would be cunningly forbid or not recommended by the Chinese Communist government.