Kong Zi

Many people that write on here about films such of this almost have too 'expert' a view. As has been said elsewhere, it is a real epic and the performance by Chow Yun Fat is exceptional. Whilst there is always going to be debate about accuracy, style and even politics about such a film, for lovers of sumptuously shot cinema and outstanding acting, it will be a joy to watch and will open up Confucius the man to many more people. It is actually being widely released in the UK on DVD and Blu Ray on Monday 4th October on the Cine-Asia label, so will be really interesting to see what a much wider audience makes of it. Personally, I think that people will appreciate its quality and see it for what it is - a very well made historical epic movie.

I just wonder if this movie is another piece of propaganda of Chinese Communist Party as in the case of "Heros", or just a pure marketing stupidity..

Confucius is, above all, a philosopher and a educator. In the Analect, He had to meet with the Wie King "Nam Tu" as he was serving under his reign. Because of this, his disciple was angry with him, and Confucius looked in the sky and swore that he did not do anything wrong and if he did the Heaven would punish him.. as a matter of fact Confucius only met this woman once and for all..

If the Chinese Commie think that by depicting Confucius as a Kon-Fu hero /War hero to attract young modern movie-goers, then it is a pure stupidity..

If the Chinese Commi want to make a propaganda to justify its "unique and indispensable" role in China Modern Society, then this movie is an insult to many young but educated modern Chinese..

It's really sad that such a great historic figure has been portrayed badly just to serve short term political interest.

Well, that 's logical anyway.. The Chinese Commie are so desperate to control their mind-opening-population..especially the young generation.. As Confucius said if you try to govern people by force and deceit, you will fail.

The Totalarian Commie system will fail in 50 years despite economic improvement.

the extremely bad thing about this movie is Chinese government try to control movie market and push it eagerly. in order to do it, Chinese government forced hot movie Avator out from cinema. as a result, there is no doubt, Chinese internet users initiate a movement to boycott this movie. they say: we don't have votes. however, we have cinema tickets. so, box office of this movie is horrible now. that is also why so many people give it a very low vote, such as 1 out of 10. i consider this movie as an victim. without Chinese government's "support", the box office will be much better.

the stories of Confucious are horrible, full of fake stuff. Confucius is THE most famous ideologist and educator in Chinese history. you can not see it in this movie. he is not a politician or militarist. However, it is very sad to see Confucius in this movie he is a politician and militarist, rather than an ideologist and educator. this will mislead so many people to recognize him, especially young people and non-Chinese.

the CG is horrible, too. you can see scenes of the movie are copied from other movies.

i am a Chinese. it is sad to see Confucius is deformed like this in order to cater somebody's taste.

There has been some commotion around this movie concerning whether it did or did not force Avatar from the 2D screens in China. So many IMDb-voters thought it necessary to vote a '1' for this movie without even seeing it.

It's a shame because it is a really good movie. I wasn't sure myself if a story around Confucius would be able to entertain me for 2 hours but it surely did! It's a fascinating and emotional story about the later years of Confucius, played by Hong Kong-actor Chow Yun Fat. It's shows the man behind the myth.

I was very impressed with Chow's acting. I knew he was a great actor but this role is another milestone in his career. His Confucius is warm and gentle and you really feel his emotions. For his performance alone this film is worth watching.

Beware: it might not be for the usual popcorn crowd, wanting to be entertained with lots of action and superficial story lines. It's an inspirational journey! Go see it!

And I'm not only talking about the years this tries to put in here. It's over 2 hours, but of course those two hours could never be enough to capture every complexity or all of his teachings. One thing is for sure, as an established actor, you almost couldn't imagine anyone else playing that role. Not saying there aren't other talented guys (Tony Leung, Andy Lau and more), but it seems Chow Yun Fat was the right choice, because he is also known in the West (and because he can act too of course).

The story moves along nicely, we also get quite a few action scenes thrown our way. There is a lot of drama and also a few nice resolutions. Some of the teachings get shown and you can see that most people had great respect for the master back then too. Which of course makes it almost impossible to believe some of the things that happened to him. They seem to be very particular when it comes to dates, but I'm sure they were creative in the times in between. A nice little movie, but I think if you want to know more about him, you'd be better off reading a book.