Jian dang wei ye

The BAD. A prequel to Founding Of A Republic, and merely an another attempt at glorifying The Communist Chinese Party for its part in bring China under one banner.Personally this film would be a peace of garbage if it wasn't for the Chinese Super Stars that starred in this film.

The GOOD I enjoy the action sequence when the First Civil War erupted during the warlord era. But right after that the film was more Politically Motivated at making the CCP,(Chinese Communist Party), look good and bashing others. Jackie Chan's 1911 was more easily enjoyable then this Communist Propaganda film. As soon as I see a name of one of China's worst leaders,(Man responsible for the failed Great Leap Forward), I just knew it was gonna go down hill really bad. In the End the film was good for battle scenes and for it's nostalgic imperial clothing and 1911 post clothing that people wore back then. Other than that, this film was a Communist film all the way.

In 1900's and 1911 and on wards China was a country that had a revolution movement that was a ticking time bomb just waiting to be lit and explode. The Chinese Civil War ended with one victor. The Communist won. And China is the way that is today.

On the plane, I looked back at this movie ten years ago. At that time, I went to the cinema just to count the stars. Now I see it again and find that it is really difficult to shoot. It is called "the great cause of the founding of the party", but ambition is to comb through the recordable modern history from the beginning, which is inevitable. However, it is not easy to balance commerciality and dedication. Although the theme of the whole film is unknown and no effective characters have been established, it is indeed the best work to balance the two characteristics mentioned above. In 1921, although the perspective is more concentrated and more "people-friendly", it has lost the opening and closing under the background of the great era and become more "small family spirit". When it comes to 110 years, we might as well follow the idea of the great cause of the founding of the party and make another concentrated attempt, which may have good results.

This movie was shot in China, still firmly controlled by Chinese Communist Party. Of course it will contain the story told by CCP. Undoubtedly it contains endless speeches to show how necessary and great CCP was. So please forget about that part. If you see the movie to look for art, drama, affection, of course you will be disappointed.

But what makes this movie different from the other Chinese propaganda movies is its huge cast. There are tons of famous Chinese, including Hong Kong and oversea Chinese, actors and actresses. You can never see so many stars in one movie, other than Jian Guo Da Ye, also produced by the same producer with an equally huge cast two years ago. The fun of watching this movie is to "count stars", instead of follow its boring and revisioned story.

Review: What an epic movie! This film certainly looked great and the costumes and scenery is superb but I didn't have a clue about what was going on. I didn't know who was who or what was where. The small captions on the bottom of the screen and the subtitles didn't help and the different story lines just made the whole movie hard to follow. Its a shame, because the acting is great and the I did feel a sense of intensity throughout the film but it's hard to keep up with the epic, political concept which changed China forever. The director over complicated the concept and he even added a love story, so there is way too many things going on at once. It reminded me a lot of the Founding Of The Republic, which was also extremely hard to follow and I personally gave up watching after a while. They could have easily split this film into 2 movies, so the director could have concentrated on different elements of he storyline. Anyway, although it looks great, the storyline is all over the place and I personally lost the plot. Disappointing!

Round-Up: After watching a few Oriental movies, I did recognise a few faces throughout this movie but I still found it hard to follow. The movie was directed by Sanping Han who also directed the confusing Founding Of The Republic with Jianxin Huang. Sanping Han has produced some top movies like Shaolin, Confucius, the great Let The Bullets Fly, the Karate Kid and Mission Impossible 3, so he's certainly got experience when it comes to big movies but he really did over complicate this one. I have to commend the directors on there efforts and the scale of this film, especially in terms the huge cast and the amazing cinematography but from an entertainment perspective, there is just too much to concentrate on.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their history/dramas starring Chow Yun- Fat, Angelababy, Daniel Wu, John Woo, Andy Lau, Simon Yam, Chao Deng, Xun Zhou and Kun Chen. 3/10

I don't think this movie is intended for non-Chinese, who weren't taught that history (1910-1949) in China. Here is the logic. The Qing Dynasty, a symbol of Feudalism, had already resigned. The Beiyang government was good at selling nation's interest and shooting at students. Sun Yat-sen was too fragile to lead China. KMP was totally corrupted and lead the whole country into disaster. So only CCP could represent Chinese people's interest and lead China. (Don't raise your hands. Recite them and we'll have tests tomorrow.) Such series(foundation of party/government) are just a film version of history books.