About a 2D viewing.This is very clearly produced under Party sponsorship to celebrate the soldiers who won the country. The contrast with US WWII films is striking. We require tough heroes, where here there is something more noble. Two remarkable things... The film has an odd framing device that one can only imagine was dreamed up by a Party official. A modern Chinese youngster is off to Silicon Valley as a sort of genius. He watches on an iPhone an old movie of this event, apparently staged by the Peking Opera. In between, we have this film. At the end, we discover that he owes his existence to this and by implication his education and opportunity. The time is set right after the collapse of the Japanese occupation. Warlords have seized the armaments and sustenance and for the People's Republic to succeed, ragtag groups must prevail. (No mention of the official government.)The strange thing is that though produced by Chinese, it is thoroughly Japanese. Kurosawan to be precise. The filmmaker remarks on this in a fun way: the movie is over, having presented the 'real' story. Then our young modern kid imagines an alternative ending, and it is thoroughly Indiana Jones. Incidentally, the stunts and effects are pretty ordinary except for a sequence with a tiger. This was amazing. Had to be real.

Positive: Good CGI, enough to make it a barely believable background and action scenes, but not great. Loosely based (meaning embellished for entertainment purposes) on post WWII varying factions vying for power in China as Japanese occupiers were being driven out. Neutral: Interesting tie in with contemporary descendant revisiting and re-imagining that period. Acting, dialogue, script, filming, all acceptable and pretty standard, straightforward, but nothing jumps out as being incredible. It almost felt as if it was a Communist Party sponsored politically correct promotional film. Rather than being a serious historical docudrama it seemed more like a lighthearted fantasy story. Negative: If looking for historical accuracy, then other than someone infiltrating a gang to spy with some sort of positive outcome for his efforts, it came across as an imaginative fantasy which may be all that a viewer is interested in. Misleading cover art.

Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy 3D directed by Tsui Hark has been released in mainland long ago, while it is going to be released in Hong Kong on May14th.Reproducing a model opera of the Cultural Revolution, the skilled are bold.The movie began with "New York 2015" and I supposed I had come to the wrong cinema. It turns out that it had something to do with Tsui Hark's affection, that he first got to know the Beijing opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy in New York, therefore, the movie is arranged with some foreign citizens of Chinese origin singing karaoke and the television mistakenly showed Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, on the screen a person asked contemptuously, "What's that?" Actually, the movie had been playing nice. If it comes into reality, the person must have yelled out loudly.Tsui Hark was very clear about this of course, so I was wondering how he would reverse negative impression of those people (exactly we audiences) on Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy—strong political complexion,old-fashion and out of date.Tsui Hark chose 3D.But 3D is not a panacea. Ring 3D in Japan suffered a crushing failure.Bullet passing through slowly and stop in a moment, then the scene circling back have been applied in Matrix in 1999. The 3D of Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy would not make any better. When ravens were flying over indoors, I could not help laughing out, for it was too similar to the owls in Harry Porter series.By the way, I could not recognize Tony Leung who acted as a bandit "Hawk". But wearing a fake nose is actually again a copy from Nicole Kidman in The Hours.In the end, I found it was only my own wishful thinking that Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy 3D would make a breakthrough apart from 3D. I can accept the protagonist is National Liberation Army and the dialogues are full of northeast dialect, but I cannot accept the movie "sticks to the original" to consecrate characters to serve politics. On the side of the protagonist, even girls and little children were loyal and courageous, having excellent marksmanship and extraordinary skills. They could catch a bandit standing guard on high by throwing up a rope; and the protagonist could fly to a snow mountain of thousands meter high by a rope.It is really not worshiping and having blind faith in foreign things. James Bond has extraordinary skills, but he can manages to make the impossible possible, to make me believe, make me stop querying and engage to movie world. Furthermore, though he has extraordinary skills, James Bond has his weakness, which makes him more human.

There used to have a very pop nostalgia song, named: where the \flowers\ GONE?IT'S to describe the girls ever took some good or bad past of the boy's love,and love..at the first place.But IN China, the NATION's name CHONG HUA(Beauty flowers) upon to describe the HEROES OF THE LAND. who ever lived. Fight.Smile.Blood.Die...IS IT beautiful ?I think so..Whatever Those /heroes/ fight for,die for..Come back to this Director XU's new stunt Movie, IT'S GOOD.IT'S a movie can hold your attention all the two hours. it's quite hard to do that now days. Especially for a Chinese movie..THAT'S ALL. for a movie. And for C.LEO's Review.