Li Cunxin is a Chinese ballet dancer. He arrives in America in a cultural exchange program sponsored by the Houston Ballet director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood). As a child, he was taken from a small rural village and trained in the state dance program in Beijing. He tries to adjust to the new culture and the new dance program. He falls for fellow dancer Elizabeth (Amanda Schull). Li wants to extend his stay but the Chinese government refuses.There is a general lack of drama in this biopic. His childhood story is interesting but without any surprises. It's interesting to see China but the story has no intensity. A similar thing can be said about the modern American side of the story. At least that has a love story and some drama about his defection. Two hours is way too long for a biopic that isn't that dramatic.

I should have trusted my instinct and avoided this movie based on the title. I pictured some sort of feel good propaganda capable of passing Chinese censorship.Li Cunxin a Chinese ballet dancer catches the eye of Ben Stevenson the Houston ballet director who is touring China in the 1970s. Ben brings him to the US as a student and makes him a star. Li marries and defects. In the end he is reunited with his family and makes a glorious visit to his homeland with his second wife. In the final scene he and his wife (also a ballet dancer) freeze in the cliché triumphant glory pose (arms together pointing to infinity) of Chinese opera. It is sickening.Another reviewer said this was paint by numbers for the masses-- Basically accurate. It made millions at the box office. Every cliché known to the genre is in this thing....the sudden need to replace the lead dancer hours before curtain call. The wise sage teacher who supplies the magic anecdotal encouragement to motivate a discouraged student. This is an autobiography--where are the negatives that would make this guy human? The excessive ambition maybe a few dirty tricks he regrets--none of that.I personally hate movies that throw up signs on how the viewer is supposed to feel and think every 10 seconds.The acting directing and story is cheesy (overdone inauthentic exaggerated) Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood) gets an F for unconvincing gay mannerisms he should have studied Paul Lynn. One flaw of Netflix Streaming is you cannot fast forward...however with about an hour to go I began to skip ahead 5 minutes at a time-- it is that bad.DO NOT RECOMMEND

Mao's last dancer is a film based on a true story, the story of a regular boy in China that gets chosen to dance ballet. He doesn't like it in the start, but eventually he turns into a total star.The main character,Li Cunxin is played magnificently by three dancers/actors; these are Wen Bing Huang, who plays Li as a child(he is a very flexible kid and pretty much a look alike to the real Li when he was a boy),Chengwu Guo, as Li adolescent(he is not as handsome as when he is an adult but that's hardly a problem)and Chi Cao plays the part as an adult(he is first dancer in an English Company)he danced so well!They showed quite a bit of dance which was good. The Rite of spring wasn't a very good choreography but the dancing of course was great. I am a dancer and I can assure you I wanted to dance like Li by the end of the film.Please go and enjoy the film with all your family.

there are a lot of things I found lacking or somewhat poor execution on the part of the filmmaker...the way it was packaged in the editing, the way some seemingly important details were glossed over, some particular liberties I imagine was taken with some of the real story, some choice of shots, inconsistencies in the use of music, a few overextended numbers, etc. etc. It wasn't a masterpiece in any sense that I sa "Not One Less" (1999, Zhang Yimou) is, in a similar genre and similar concerns.That being said, this film falls on the shoulder of Li Cunxin's story and the story carries well. It's tension of family versus individual and not the tension of East versus West, and to that end it is where the film gets its power, as we see toward the end of the film. It's hard for a life's journey to be chronicled in two hours in an entertainment format but I think this film does it well enough to perhaps encourage people to do some additional reading on their own.