This film is set in 1927 and is mostly about the final split between the Communists and Kuomintang, who had been allied for several years against the older sort of warlord. It begins and ends with battle scenes, but is mostly about the politics and conspiracy between times.The film fails to give the context, which non-Chinese viewers would be unlikely to know. That China's 1911 revolution had led to chaos and warlordism. That Sun Yatsen had formed an alliance with the Soviet Union and with China's small Communist Party. That the Northern Expedition, starting from the Kuomintang's southern base, was aimed at suppressing the warlords and also the rival national government in Beijing. That by 1927, Sun Yatsen was dead and Chiang Kai-Shek had rejected the Communist alliance and also failed to do anything about foreign control of the core of Shanghai and many other Chinese cities. A couple of minutes explaining this would have made the rest of the film a lot clearer.I was also surprised that Sun Yatsen's widow wasn't shown. She played an important role as leader of those non-Communists who wanted to continue the alliance.