The Crossing

The previous episode, as a foreshadowing story, focuses on depicting several groups of characters whose fate is entangled in the context of the great era. The story still makes sense, but the texture of the epic has not been made.

Four years after making waves in Chinese cinema with the ambitious and yet immensely satisfying 'Red Cliff', John Woo has taken that metaphor literally in yet another expensive historical epic diptych. Widely dubbed as China's answer to Hollywood's 'Titanic', it is built around the sinking of the steamer Taiping after its collision with another vessel while en route from Shanghai to Taiwan's Keelung Harbour on January 27, 1949, leading to the deaths of over 1,000 refugees fleeing the rule of the Communists at the height of the Chinese Civil War. But to set expectations right, you won't even get to see the start of that doomed voyage by the end of this movie, which really is meant to establish three different sets of characters whose fates converge on board the Taiping.

Given the historical context, Woo has chosen to ground this opening half against the backdrop of the conflict between the Nationalists and the Communists that gripped China at the turn of the half- century. Indeed, each of these characters find their stories set in motion by the revolution – on one hand, the stoic and honourable General Lei Yi Fang (Huang Xiaoming) of the National Revolutionary Army fighting a losing battle at the frontlines, his beautiful socialite wife Zhou Yun Fen (Song Hye-Kyo) waiting for his safe return in Taiwan, and his comrade-in-arms Tong Da Qing (Tong Dawei); and on the other, the nurse Yu Zhen (Zhang Ziyi) searching for her long-lost lover by volunteering at a makeshift hospital in Shanghai for the wounded as well as the Taiwanese doctor Yan Ze Kun (Takeshi Kaneshiro) also looking for his long-lost Japanese lover Noriko (Masami Nagasawa).

Over the course of two hours, Woo's screenwriter Wang Hui-Ling plots the intersecting paths of these characters with varying results. Of the three characters pining to be reunited with their loves – Yi Fang, Yu Zhen and Ze Kun – the last gets the shortest shrift, despite having potentially the most interesting arc. Ze Kun's mother's objections to his relationship with Noriko is only given cursory mention, and doesn't go much further beyond the fact that Noriko is of the same race as the Japanese imperialists who had before occupied the island. Yu Zhen's determination to be reunited with her lover at the frontlines of battle at least resonates in parts because of the extent that she is willing to go to search for him, even sacrificing her 'body' so she can save enough money to buy a ticket to Taiwan where he may be.

But the bulk of the screen time is dedicated to Yi Fang, or more precisely, his frustration at being made to wait out for weeks with hundreds of starving troops in the cold snowy mountains while his superiors consolidate their positions in much better environments. Much to our relief, Yi Fang spends most of the second half of the movie apart from his wife Yun Fen. Ironic as it may be, their time spent apart from each other is more moving than that spent together, which make up a total of four utterly cringe-worthy scenes.

Notwithstanding that Woo has consciously made this film in the vein of 'Casablanca' or 'Gone with the Wind', it is precisely the romance at the heart of each of the three overlapping stories that is its weakest link. Woo doesn't so much romanticise the proceedings than drench them in syrup, and let's just say if you had goosebumps from what passed between Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack and Kate Winslet's Rose, then you'll be literally breaking out in cold sweat here. The only relationship that doesn't come off hokey is strictly speaking only half a romance, and that is of Da Qing's yearning for Yu Zhen, with whom he paid off to pass off as his wife in a photo so he can get more rations.

Those hoping for the sort of grand battle sequences in 'Red Cliff' will probably be sorely disappointed as well. As much as Woo doesn't shy away from portraying the carnage of war, there is none of the thrill that comes simply from a properly choreographed sequence. There's no doubt war is a messy affair, but there is too little semblance of continuity between the gratuitous shots of scores of soldiers charging at each other or vehicles getting eviscerated from underneath. The fact that too many of them happen in slo-mo is even more ingratiating, exacerbated by the blatant framing of some shots meant as feeble justification for the higher 3D price in selected theatres.

No doubt for commercial reasons, Huang spends more time on screen than any other character, but the actor is either too stoic in his scenes with Song or too expressionless as that of a commander forced to watch his men starve, freeze and eventually die. Zhang fares much better as the devoted lover willing to sacrifice all to be reunited with the man she loves; hers is unequivocally a more nuanced performance balancing determination and vulnerability. Kaneshiro is sorely wasted in a role that is acutely underdeveloped, and even the lesser-billed Tong is given a more substantive character to work with.

It's no secret that 'The Crossing' is Woo's passion project. Unfortunately, Woo has chosen to make this first part by way of a wartime romance, and while Woo has shown he can be good with the former, he proves here for the first time that he is quite inept with the latter. That clumsiness has unfortunately crossed over to his portrayal of the former, which frankly lacks persuasion or poignancy. Seeing as how different the concluding chapter will likely be from the first, we hope Woo will pick up the pieces and forge a more compelling voyage come six months later.

Almost twenty years after James Cameron's Titanic broke cineplexes with its combination of blockbuster spectacle and heartrending emotion, John Woo is hoping to do the same with The Crossing. Based on the real- life sinking of a Taiwan-bound steamer that claimed 1,500 lives (approximately the same number lost aboard the RMS Titanic), Woo's latest epic boasts three times the romance and, one would think, three times the heartbreak and drama. In theory, anyway. In actuality, splitting the movie into two means that there's no sign of the titular journey in this first installment of The Crossing - for that, you'll have to wait for the sequel, due in cinemas in May 2015. What you do get is plenty of occasionally soggy backstory for the film's three star-crossed couples, as they meet and fall in love against a backdrop of world and civil war.

In the midst of World War II, General Lei Yifang (Huang Xiaoming) bravely commands his troops against the Japanese, while signaller Tong Daqing (Tong Dawei) captures Yan Zekun (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a Taiwanese doctor conscripted into the Japanese army. When the war ends, each man finds love: Yifang marries heiress Zhou Yunfen (Song Hye-Kyo); Daqing forms an unexpected connection with nurse Yuzhen (Zhang Ziyi), a complete stranger who plays his wife in a family photo so he can get more rations; and Zekun pines after Noriko (Masami Nagasawa), his sweetheart who has since been repatriated to Japan. But their lives change again when the civil war erupts: suddenly, the men are called back into battle, to fight against people they fought with and for just a few years ago.

There's no denying it - at its worst, Woo's film plays like two hours of filler. It meanders in episodic bursts through the lives of these six characters, never quite making a convincing argument for its existence. We know it's meant to create emotional stakes for the sequel, but a great deal of the drama that unfolds in this film could be condensed by a canny screenwriter into a few minutes of narrative context.

It doesn't help that Woo doesn't fully deliver on either the military or the romantic aspects of the film. The opening battle feels like it was shot a few decades ago: the blood splatters are gory and unrealistic, while the action beats disappear amidst the carnage - the last thing you'd expect from a Woo movie. It recalls Michael Bay at his most boom-tastic, which isn't really a compliment. The relationships play out in stilted, somewhat soggy fashion, told as much through voice-over as actual interaction: a barefoot Yunfen somehow waltzes away with Yifang's heart, Zekun must hastily disguise his sketches of Noriko's eyes during an art class, and Daqing pays his fake wife in noodles that aren't salty enough for his taste.

And yet, this installment of The Crossing is not entirely without merit. Stick with it long enough, and some of its scattered episodes and ideas will prove more affecting than you'd expect. This comes primarily from Woo's surprisingly even-handed treatment of the civil war that breaks out within China: neither side is vilified; indeed, we're shown what happens when brothers-in-arms find themselves returning to war on opposite sides. There are moments of quiet comedy - three starving soldiers find a rabbit in the woods - and others of devastating betrayal, when true allegiances are revealed. For a big-budget release clearly targeting the Chinese market, it's interesting that Woo doesn't downplay that element of Taiwanese resistance, instead folding the people, their language and their strength into the film.

Woo's all-star cast is competent, but not quite strong enough to save The Crossing when it's determined to, well, sink. Zhang is blessed with the meatiest role. It may be predictable - poor, illiterate nurse struggles to earn enough money to buy a ticket to Taiwan to find her true love - but she imbues it with plenty of grit and desperation. Tong treads a fine line between comedy and tragedy as Daqing, shifting from comic relief to unexpected war hero as circumstances spin out of everyone's control.

The other actors fare less well. Kaneshiro and Nagasawa are little more than an afterthought, turning up briefly and thus far inconsequentially throughout the film, while Huang and Song are saddled with the most dismally boring of love stories. The former, so charming in other movies, has apparently decided to play his role with an arrogant sneer almost permanently stuck to his face, which can make for somewhat disconcerting viewing.

There are, of course, financial reasons galore for Woo to split his epic into two films. But are there any creative ones? It's possible to charitably grant him and his producers the benefit of the doubt - there's nothing wrong, per se, in dedicating an entire film to building up to an event that will only take place in the sequel. But it's hard to believe that box-office considerations didn't play a part when the final product is less hit than miss, a bundle of moments strung together with little subtlety and not enough care. The first installment in a franchise should leave you hungering for more - The Crossing, at best, creates a sense of mild but hardly overpowering curiosity about how everything will shake out.

It is said to be the Chinese version of Titanic. Well, grossly overstated. Even though I have only watched the first part of this saga and the characters have yet boarded the fatal vessel Tai Ping, I do not think I would miss much not seeing the second part.

The crossing is quite disappointing from inside out on all aspects. The historic background is forever fascinating: at the end of the Sino-Japan War in the early 1940s, the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) was fighting the Japanese fiercely by collaborating with the communists and the Russians. Then after the Japanese were gone, the Nationalists had to fight the Communists in a civil war amid their own corrupted administration. In the end they had to retreat to Taiwan which had already been governed by Japan for 50 years.

It is under this backdrop the movie attempts to depict three tragic romances in a turbulent era: a marriage between a Kuomintang general Lei Yifang (Huang Xiaoming) and wealthy young woman Zhou Yufen (Korean actress Song Hye-kyo) who plays the piano very well; a Taiwanese army doctor Yan Zekun (Takeshi Kaneshiro) for the Japanese army and his Japanese girlfriend Masako (Japanese actress Nagami Nagasawa) in Taiwan; and a pseudo relationship for convenience between a Kuomintang soldier Tong Daqing (Tong Dawei) and a country woman Yu Zhen (Zhang Ziyi) looking for her lost lover in the army. Looking at the background and the complexity of each relationship, perhaps each could have been developed into an independent story, thus exploring the themes of social class, national identity, political ideology versus practical survival, cultural differences, loyalty in the army versus morality etc. Instead, producers have squeezed these romances together and packed with tons of visually impressive battle and explosion scenes, later to be converted into 3-D. It just does not work very well.

The worst part is how the plot is crafted: there is very little character development/interaction or relationship depiction that path the way to convince the audience that the relationships help the characters to get through their tough lives which seems to be one main theme of the movie. Most of their longing for each other are based on narration either through letters or reading from a diary where audience cannot see how and why they miss/love each other so much. Then the editing is so abrupt that it feels very choppy: the audience are always led to other scenes and emotions when one scene is not even fully developed.

As for the acting, the poor plot and script development inhibits the actors from portraying complex emotions. Thus it is very hard for the audience to feel moved. Among the cast, Zhang Ziyi has done the best among others but we still have limited feelings for her. On that point, if including a Korean and Japanese cast is for marketing consideration, I begin to feel the political considerations for portraying the Nationalists in a negative light to cater for the Chinese market would really hinder the movie's artistic development.

Whenever there are three subplots in a movie, there should be some relationships between them – a good example is Disconnect - but in The Crossing the connection is quite weak, not to mention the three romances are quite superficial in themselves and could have been heavily reworked.

Even the make up/camera angle is poor which fail to bring out the radiant youth of the characters. Too many close ups exposing the aged faces when the actors are supposed to be teenagers. These could have been easily fixed by after production but obviously not taken care of.

All in all, I feel quite a waste of huge budget on the explosion scenes and historic background. In terms of depicting ordinary lives during wartime, Little House is much much better. I think The Crossing aims too high, overextends itself too much to hit a too wide spectrum of audience. Thus it has compromised its literal, historical and artistic value.

Lastly, even the preview of part II is done tactlessly which cannot entice the audience to crave for more. One probably does not miss much not watching this, let alone part II. Too bad.

just like what director woo did to his "red cliff", an absolutely long and dreary movie that had to be divided into two parts, this pathetic movie, "the crossing", was inevitably piled up into two parts. i often thought that if a director got enough conscience, even he got lot of money from the investors/producers, he would never waste so much money on those totally unnecessary scenes. we often thought a movie that good or bad was totally relied on the director, but actually it's not, the fundamentally important necessity coming first for a good or a bad movie is from the 'screenplay' that would forecast the success or failure of a movie. then, the second important factor to the movie is the work of the director who served as a good editor like what a publisher provided the author to fine tuned the novel before printing, working with the screenplay writer(s), point out the blind spots, the mistakes, the ridiculous storyline/scenarios, the illogic plots, those areas where the writers might not have noticed during the writing, and demand them to be corrected, omitted, deleted and to be rewritten. by the length of the 'red cliff' and 'the crossing', woo obviously not only didn't do anything of the above-mentioned necessity as a good editor titled as a 'director', he might even have asked the screenplay writers to lengthen and to prolong the movie manuscript since he got too much production budget to spend. if the screenplay is too concentrate and has been squeezed into a tighter one, then he lose the opportunity to spend it all, or even worse, to ask for more money to complete a well-ballooned project.

based upon such premises, we then clearly see why these two movies had turned out to be such a long and diluted products. unnecessary scenes of battles, banquets, dancing, crowded interior and exterior segments, unnecessary teasing, flirting or hostile close-up or pan-out scenes between or among the main characters, expensive settings and costumes.....and all of them actually could be omitted, yet a self-indulgent director, on the contrary, would not have the least intention to do the opposite. therefore, just like some of the self-important pompous western directors who often generated more animosity with the movie production companies and the producers, woo did it again and again in such extravaganza formula and style.

an international well-known director, when asked the casting agency to call up some hot actors to participate his new project, most of them if not with on-going projects, would never like to lose the opportunity to jump on the money train to do the stunts. so what we got here are bunch of renown actors signed up with woo to benefit both for each other. yet this unhealthily swollen film only made these actors become shallow puppets in this film, doing a lot of ridiculously unnecessary scenes that in the first place, should be cut or omitted. they just kept changing custom-made new costumes like models on the runway of a fashion show, appeared in so many unnecessary parts of this diluted film to become part of the generic medicine prescribed by the director.

trying so hard to imitate the epic movie 'titanic' with the Chinese turmoil time of Japanese invasion, the insurgent Chinese communists controlled, manipulated by the soviet communist party from Russia, the struggling nationalist party's army that did the actually battles against the Japanese invasion forces, then came up a backdrop of a ship of fools trying to run away from the dangers and migrate to an island, then sunken to the bottom of the strait. a movie based upon a sunken vessel full of war-torn refugees who were then used as the fictitious ingredients of an absolutely no-big-deal, totally unimportant and pointless so-called historical saga, forcing the audiences to waste almost 5 hours in darkness facing a silver screen, well, is not what a well-paid-and-well-rewarded satisfying experience, unless they are die-hard fans of those actresses and actors; otherwise, it's a torture.

when the pointless first battle was over, the Chinese soldier lit up a big cigar and puffed it....can you believe it?! a Chinese soldier smoking a cigar? in the 1940s? on the Chinese battlefield? mr. woo, are you kidding me? this is a Chinese movie, not a American western movie, not a gunslinger like clint eastwood did after a gun battle. be serious, will you?

what i'd like to add are the review titles from IMDb's reviewers of some other movies that usually turned out to be so shallow, so ridiculous, so laughable and so pointless:

"All style and no substance" "Action movie, not "realistic" "Garbage movie - designed to make money for (both director and leading actors)" "Waste of time and money" "Movies today are money, not quality, acting, directing, dialog, story & plots are all in the toilet, past the septic tank and into the weeping bed. Movies today simply suck. "

that's about it.