Ji yi da shi

Battle Of Memories is a very good movie. It keeps you guessing until the very end. You will guess a number of times as you watch this movie but I don't think you'll figure it out. It's very engrossing and a little disturbing. It's a sci fi crime 'whodunnit' drama set in the near future. Excellent acting and cinematography.

This is a Chinese movie but I saw it with subtitles in English as well as Mandarin.

The actors gave great performances, especially Yang Zishan, Huang Bo, Xu Jinglei, Duan Yihong, Hsu Wei‑ning. The acting plus the cinematography made this intellectual sci-fi movie compelling and very believable.

Chinese/ Thai co-production about a man, going through a divorce, who has a procedure done which removes select memories from his mind. He later has the surgery reversed, to regain his lost memories, and finds his memory is now somehow linked with that of a killer, possibly a serial killer. A major problem is that he sees the memories the killer has * in first person *, so when he attempts to tell the local authorities, he becomes prime suspect in the double murder, and thrown into Hannibal Lector's plexiglass holding cell.

The subject of memory has always fascinated me, as I am burdened with an eidetic memory, so this film's premise obviously intrigued me, the surgical removal of painful memories, pleasurable memories, unforgettable things, things best left forgotten, so I enjoyed this film, but found it to be uneven, and a bit overlong.

Battle of Memories is quite intriguing ... for the first 5 minutes. After that I'm afraid, it's all down hill. Constantly referencing a host of similar - themed, but better, earlier movies (Total Recall, Inception, Paycheck etc), it's major problem lies in its foundation plot line premise. In the future people can go to Memory Centres and undergo procedures to erase some of their memories ... subject to, we find out, a plethora of confusing, uninteresting qualifications, terms and conditions. Immediately the alert viewer is asking oneself who would bother then, if it's not a straight forward operation? Well apparently Jiang Feng would.

He's a popular author whose wife, Zhang Daichen has decided to divorce him, for reasons (surprise, surprise!) that are never made clear. So not unreasonably then I suppose, he decides to have his memories of her deleted, a course of action that we suspect may be compromised by a critical incident occurring, just before he leaves the Centre. To add to his misfortune, on arriving home, Daichen suddenly announces she wants to postpone the divorce (for reasons not explained until the last 10 minutes of the film, in a ho hum twist dramatically better utilised in soap operas such as Days of Our Lives). And things don't get much better despite the inclusion of serial - killers, odd ball cops and copious black and white memory flashbacks (and for good measure, endless variations of same).

Production standards are admittedly quite good, but overall tone of the film is just plain weird. It's not just the reams of clunky, awkward dialogue that characters are forced to spout (it can't all be blamed on poor sub - title translations.) But the tone of the film is constantly out of kilter. E. G. What's with episodes such as the Three Stooges like slapstick farce of the cops rolling down the stairs together, in a film supposed to be some sort of sci - fi thriller?

For those who manage to stay the course of this dull mess of a film, they'll find Battle of Memories collapsing into a morass of blindingly stupid coincidences and who cares plot twists. Character motivations change directions like the wind to better suit the convenience of the story. The climactic revelation of the killer's identity is obvious, with the only benefit being we now know this banal movie will thankfully soon end.

Clever use of plot twists. As with sixth sense, you watch it twice to check for clues missed on first viewing.

The people who gave it high ratings must watch only 1 movie every 5 or 10 years. you cant tell its a chinese movie except for the chinese faces, everything else is a copy of something else or other already done in movies. copying parts of 10 great sci fi or thriller movies doesnt make it a great movie. the chinese movie industry has more money to spend then hollywood and still really cant turn anything decent to put on the screen. you're lucky if you find a good movie out of 10. the movie gets 5 stars because it is professional but that draws the line. theres also the requisite pop songs they like putting into movies...dont matter if pop songs dont belong in a thriller movie. they try to sell you everything at one time ...lol. again...a professionally done movie with decent actors but so underwhelming and a major copycat of multiple great movies. i love great thrillers and sci fis...sighhh...this had a little potential but sure wasnt it.