The Crossing

Not my kind of movie, but this one didn't bored me as hell as Titanic did. I've read people complaining about complexity of the trama, I only can say that way is the american public: they want all fast and easy, they don't want to think too much. But if you like a bit more complex tramas, give The Crossing a try.

I can only say that the director thinks too much. Multi-line narrative, but the whole story was cut apart. There are too many roles involved, too many complicated plots, too many side details to be cut off, and the result is that the slow pace makes people fall asleep. The camera language tends to be exquisite, trying to show rich feelings, and actually more procrastinating.

This is an epic drama of the conflict between the Nationalists and Communists post WW2 in China and subsequent escape to Taiwan.

The good points. The story is engrossing. It doesn't try to cram too many characters in like some other epic Chinese historical dramas. There are several distinct stories that that involve the viewer. A Taiwanese doctor (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and his Japanese girlfriend (Masami Nagasawa), a Nationalist general (Huang Xiao Ming) and his upper class wife (Song Hye Kyo), and a humble soldier (Tong Dawei) and the nurse turned prostitute he loves (Zhang Ziyi). The production values are high and cinematography is good. Zhang Ziyi as the nurse acts convincingly. The movie shows the senseless tragedy in fighting a civil war just after WW2.

The bad points The battle scenes are way too exaggerated and this hurts the story. The explosions and fireballs are just too Tarantino huge for the 1940s. The romances are a too coy and cutesy and the some of the romantic dialog is painfully bad that it's comical. Zhang Ziyi and Takeshi Kaneshiro act well enough but some of the other acting is below par. Huang Xiao Ming Song is too preening that it is comical especially with the aviator sunglasses. Song Hye Kyo has this wistful look that belongs in Korean soap operas. The subtitles are small and in white so they can't be clearly read sometimes.

Overall it's worth a watch for the epic sweep that covers a tumultuous time in Chinese history not often shown on film. Have to wait till next year for the conclusion and ship sinking.

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.

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.