kosmasp
This movie is really funny and brutal at the same time. Which is a hard thing to balance. Violence is "real" (with consequences for the characters involved that is), but the humor still works. Two factors play into that in my estimation: The script and the really good actors playing in this.Mixture works and the CGI effects are really good too. Then you also have some wonderful dialogue between the main characters that is so rich, the translation might not do it entire justice (watched it with subtitles on and was hard to follow from time to time). But it's apparent how much fun they had shooting this movie. If you like eastern movies, I do not need to convince you to watch this. But maybe this can be your entry into a whole new (fascinating) world for you ...
Tony Heck
"I do not care about being rich but I must come up with a game plan to rid of Huang once and for all. Give me time, Pop will avenge your death." When bandit chief "Pocky" Zhang comes to a remote Chinese village he says he is the new mayor. After things go too far and someone ends up dead a battle for revenge begins between him and Master Huang (Yun-Fat). This is a movie I was actually really looking forward to. The preview looked really good and action packed. The first 15 minutes was great and full of action. Then it started to gradually slow down. The story was very interesting and kept me watching, but it really lost momentum and by the end I was starting to lose interest. I'm not saying this is a bad movie but it was like coasting down a mountain, the closer you get to flatting out the slower you go. This is worth seeing but don't expect excitement all the way through. Overall, a good movie that could have been better I think. I give it a B-.
Bai Gan
I didn't like it as a movie and was slightly offended by it after seeing it for the firs time. Then I watched it again and realized it is actually a series of encrypted political messages disguised as a movie. You can call it a movie if you consider movie an 'entertainment' and that this is the way Chinese people in China are entertained, with bitterness and cynicism. Everything in the movie is just too 'real' and it is painful (for me) to watch. Director Jiang, Wen had too much to say and couldn't say it directly. Starting from the title, if you notice that the title that first appeared was translated to be 'let the bullet fly for a while; then 'for a while' was removed. This was Jiang Wen's first message: everything he tries to say has to be in disguise, sometimes mixed with jokes in bad tastes such as when he said how he followed General Cai'e during the revolution then became bandit after Cai died in Japan, which was followed by Ge You's digression on when he was 17 blah blah blah, the title means you need to wait for a while before the message goes through to audience (had to bypass censorship first) There were dialogues in the movie nobody can get right away and tell what logical purpose it serves, such as when Huang Cilang said he met Ma bandit 20 years before, together with other mysterious dialogues reveal who they were and how they became who they are now. They both implied that they know Japanese suicide rituals well, which meant they were both close to the revolution etc. Anyway, it is painful to watch because it is so real.
Guy
Plot: A bandit impersonates the new governor of a town and comes into conflict with the crime boss who runs it.This film is essentially a Western set in the Warlord China of the 1920s. It is full of zest and at its best it is a charming mix of cartoon action, physical humour and bravura performances by the leads. Its desire to simply play around with genres, techniques and conventions is wonderfully endearing and very interesting. The gunplay in particular, which becomes a sort of ballistic chop-socky, is superb. But the problem is that the script is too messy, desperately in need of an edit. Nearly every character is pretending to be someone - or someones - else, whilst the conflict between the two gangs is largely played out through ruses and deception rather than fighting. The result is a hugely over-complex, over-long and needlessly confusing plot. This film ought to have been a good 30 minutes shorter and a great deal tighter - and would have been all the better for it. Nonetheless, this is an interesting and enjoyable mess.Worth one viewing.
AD
