This film starts with the 1911 xinhai revolution and quickly goes over the chaos of the early republic and its trouble with Yuan shi-kai. The May 4th movement is portrayed as the touchstone to the founding of the communist party (certainly a lot of the future leaders of the party started getting involved in politics at this time). This could have been a much longer film covering more in depth coverage of the personalities of this time and still have my interest because of my study of Chinese history. For a general audience this film may have too many characters they know nothing about and find confusing. Even more so if you are not Chinese or a student of this time in history. How many people know about the Japanese occupation of the Shandong peninsula and its impact on Chinese thinking about the west? If you do have some knowledge of the people and time in China during the years covered in this film you will enjoy this movie.

I really loved this magnificent epic. As an avid reader of Chinese history, I was surprised by the historical accuracy of this film. Now I realize why the Chinese people love Mao-Zedong; most of the touching moments in the film involve his beloved Yang-Kaihui and him. As for the film being propagandistic, aren't most films made in Hollywood propagandistic? Delta Force, Rambo, Top Gun, just to mention a few. I guess some narrow-minded people might consider it propaganda if it shows the Chinese point of view instead of the Western perspective. I truly recommend this film to anybody who is interested in politics and Chinese history.

Well, this is a movie made with political purpose, however it is not an extremely bad movie if you take off the political bits.the producer has been working hard on the detail and it actually corrected several historical common sense of the general Chinese population.Lot of famous local celebrities so it is quite fun sometimes.Apart from that it is nothing, this is not a serious way to produce a movie for history.BTW, the writer used to write comedy.I think a fair score will be 2 or 3, however because of this movie, transformer 3 will have to be postponed till end of July therefore i will give 1.

I would first say that the movie is for Chinese audience, or for those who know Chinese and Chinese history. I don't mean to set a gap here, but if you don't know who's who, you may get lost. And then, when you finish the movie, you tend to draw a conclusion that everything is for the creation of the Communist Party of China. OK, you have no clue and thereby think it's all about politics. Indeed, the movie is not about a single story but a piece of history as long as 10 years. That may be why the non-Chinese audience quickly lose their interest and patience. That's true that the movie is dedicated to the party. However, for the Chinese audience who were educated to memorize the big names of historical figures, as well as the famous student protest (May Fourth Movement), it would be very interesting to see how the event is restored on screen. Everything happens for a reason. If you can discard your doubt about the political purpose of the movie during watching, you may get to know the history better and then think for a while how it is transited from the beginning to 90 years later. Besides, you would hardly understand the metaphor hidden in the "seemingly dull" plots if you don't know the contemporary Chinese society. I personally guess that the director learned a bit from the very popular Chinese movie Let the Bullet Fly (in theaters earlier this year). How? Think about the final words of the movie, which was read aloud on the boat ...For its content, the censorship organization may worry that it is kinda sensitive for the vivid description of student protest. But considering its purpose, it must be in theaters (what did the incredibly many movie stars come together for?) So, I think that's the "novelty" of this movie.