Ogosmith
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Clarissa Mora
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Roman Sampson
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Jenni Devyn
Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
leonblackwood
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
Anders Twetman
It seems that this movie has a low score due to being propaganda for the Communist Party of China. I choose however to judge the film as a film, not as a piece of propaganda. The story, if you can even call it a story, is very disconnected, more like a series of events than an actual narrative. Almost all of the events, especially those early on, seem to be concerned with a bunch of Chinese men in thin mustaches speaking about different matters. At the start of each such episode, there i a brief text with a date and a short explanation. Since my Chinese is not good enough to read this, it is all a rather confusing mishmash of things happening. Since my knowledge of modern Cinese history is also somewhat limited I cant say if anything is historically accurate or just made up. What I do know is that an effort has been put into portraying a time of great conflict and political turmoil, and portraying a sort of general movement in the otherwise nonexistent story. I believe, that a person who understands Chinese would understand more of whats going on, I however found it rather tedious and boring at times.There are scenes in the movie where the men in mustaches stop talking and start doing things instead, for instance there i a battle sequence (I have no idea who is fighting who) which is really good, all actions scenes manage to wake you up and capture the viewers imagination for a moment. Visually the movie is very nice, everything looks good, especially previously mentioned war scene. The music is fitting too and it all creates a lot of atmosphere, with such a fragmented plot, it almost becomes a case of style over substance, though i can sense that the substances is in there somewhere. I think in the end tat, as a movie, "The Founding of a Party" is not bad at all. It has its boring moments and the disjoint storyline is a big problem but other than that, I think it kind of works, I would rate this at six out of ten but then there is that propaganda issue.The film ends with an episode in 1921 (which I remember to be more or less historically correct from what little history i know) and then it fast forwards through World War II up to the modern day. This is all accompanied by a narrator (who wasn't translated in my version of the film) who seems to be telling about how china rose to power and everything was good. This whole ending really ruins it for me, especially the final shot of modern day Beijing with a portrait of Chairman Mao outside the forbidden city. The entire film is very one sided, buts that's just a matter of perspective, it is clear though, that this final part of the film is pure propaganda and I jut cant stand by that. Because of the propaganda part I have to lower my grade by two points.
nkwleeds
Great struggle! What an impressive movie with great casts. The actors and actresses have done well. The movie was filled with lots of suspense. Chow Yun Fatt and Andy Lau were superb. There were so many well known actors and actresses in this movie. All the casts have done well to illustrates the titanic struggle to unite the country. The peaceful protest,demonstrations and the nationalism portrayed were very realistic. I have watched it several times and some scenes reminded me of the OWS movement. The movie did awesomely in portraying how the conspiracy to divide China inspired the people to go against the corrupted officials. I highly recommended all to watch.
Kicino
Very interesting to see history alive on the big screen. Very busy identifying the characters and the stars and associating them with what we have learnt in history class. As a movie, character development is weak because there are simply too many people parading in two hours distilled from a turbulent 10 years of contemporary China. As an education aid for Chinese history, this is very interesting, lively and educational, thanks to the on screen description. As a mirror to reflect recent China's development, my eyes moist to see history not only repeats itself but somehow even moves backwards. Same passion from the students, same type of demonstration against the weak and corrupted government. Same demand to open government doors. Even same style of kneeling down to appeal. Didn't we learn anything from history? The students in 1919 even hit some government officials and set fire on their houses. But the Nationalist government did not crash them to death or force them to leave the country. When some students started a hunger strike in jail and asked for newspapers to read as a deal, the prison guards gave in. Can't we see the film is trying to tell us a message about the present state through historic events? A party based on the strength of workers, farmers and soldiers and the have-not's have developed into a unique style with Chinese characteristics where those at the bottom of the pyramid are still suffering. The movie may seem boring or bland on the surface. We need to contrast that with reality. The message is safely disguised under the name of history. Where else in China can we see large scale demonstrations, deemed legitimate, in a Chinese movie? I look forward to seeing a movie on the Cultural Revolution and the June 4 incident with equal dedication.