Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

lifuxin2001 The reviews for this movie are too much plagiarized by US propaganda (rating this as 1) and Chinese propaganda (rating it as 10). If you take an unbiased view from a normal Chinese people, it's just a rather average movie. Hey, let's rate a movie based on its merit, the impression it gives people and so on, not just by politics!The initial scenes are a bit dull and disconnected with the whole story. The film fails to tell the story of Tao Chengzhang (the guy with the bomb, later get murdered) at all so these scenes should be cut-off completely, just a waste of minutes.After that it went quite fine with the story of Yuan Shikai (Chow Yun- fat) and Cai E (Andy Lau), it's quite touching to see General Cai could barely stand but still directs the victory over Yuan who elected himself as the emperor. And the Mao Zedong (Ye Liu) line is also OK and quite touching.The May fourth movement part is a performed very well. For a Chinese, it reminded of a story the government often fails to tell. The tensions with the Japanese about the invasion of Shandong, the government's inability to make diplomatic maneuvers, and the fanatic approach of the students. I would say that's a nice historical lesson to take, especially in nowadays China where student movement is mostly a banned topic (because of the 89' Tiananmen square accident). Some of the speeches of Chen Duxiu (Feng Yuanzheng) are well carried out indeed, that it feels like the audience in the film were really convinced by him and were fully supporting his ideas.However, the government side could be strengthened a bit. It talks about Wellington Koo (Daoming Chen) and his diplomatic efforts, but these were cut too heavily so the full story was not told very clearly.Then the final scenes are not so good. The story lacks a climax and it looks to have ended without any major thing happening. OK the CCP formed, secretly while being hunted down by the police but so what? That ending can definitely be strengthened quite a bit. A few scenes on the things that happened in the next years, or a mere history time-line will make the epic feeling much better.Overall, the film is ambitious in trying to condense 10 years of history into a mere 2 hours. But that turns out to be a bit too ambitious so in the end many things are told by just hand-waving. It could be made better by cutting off some of the less relevant scenes and making the main plot more concentrated on a few major characters (e.g., Yuan Shikai, Cai E, Mao Zedong, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao). But in general, the cast is good most of the time and at least the told historical facts are accurate (of course there're a lot of omitted trivia, e.g., Chen Duxiu went too often to night clubs and was sacked by the Peking university because he was found fighting for a prostitute). So if somebody is paying (e.g. the Chinese government) for the tickets, it's worthy to see it for free. But I won't pay to watch it, so a good strategy for the CCP would be to make it freely available online, after they've netted the 8 billion box office gross by the left-pocket, right-pocket trick.

Harry T. Yung LIU Ye's portrayal of young Mao is romanticised beyond belief, in scenes like the New Year Eve firework. It's generally known that Mao is just as much as womanizer as Jack and Bill, maybe with a little more kinship to Jack in their shared interest in movie stars, rather than to Bill's poor taste.The selling point of star-gazing is also stretched to the limit. The culminating climax of the movie, the meeting that establishes the Chinese Communist Party, is set in a aesthetically unsurpassed scene: on a boat drifting on an idyllic, serenely misty lake that might have been lifted directly out of the frame of a traditional Chinese painting. What you'll likely remember from this scene is not the rousing sentiments of the men inside the boat cabin, but of beautiful ZHOU Xun (who cares what character she plays) at the front, in elegant period dress holding a parasol, a bewitching goddess of love and loveliness.Just like "The founding of a republic" (2009), this movie is populated with a proliferation of Who's Who in ethnic Chinese movie world today, to the extent that to the general audience, their names may mean more than the names of the characters they play. The movie is not difficult to follow at least in the sense that events are presented in a linear and chronological manner, compared with the stock of temporally scrambled works we have become so used to. How much is recognized depend on how familiar one is what this part of Chinese history. But when the names (which appear on the screen at the characters' first appearance) are missed or not recognized, one probably surmises that in a movie of this sort, if they are played by the likes of Andy Lau or Daniel Wu, they must be good guys.

lordsagacity I don't think this movie is intended for non-Chinese, who weren't taught that history (1910-1949) in China. Here is the logic. The Qing Dynasty, a symbol of Feudalism, had already resigned. The Beiyang government was good at selling nation's interest and shooting at students. Sun Yat-sen was too fragile to lead China. KMP was totally corrupted and lead the whole country into disaster. So only CCP could represent Chinese people's interest and lead China. (Don't raise your hands. Recite them and we'll have tests tomorrow.) Such series(foundation of party/government) are just a film version of history books.

lkyuri As quoted by a professor in China, "It is an era of irony. You are encouraged to sing songs of revolution, but you are discouraged to make revolution. You are encouraged to see a film of founding a party (Beginning of the Great Revival), but you are discouraged to really found a new party." Another quote from China netizen, "It is a film about a group of people fighting dictatorship, and finally became the ones they originally fought against." Facts are somewhat filtered and neglected from the film. If talking about May 4th movement, why the two main thoughts are omitted. The thoughts of democracy and science are main theme too. Why is this neglected? Why does the film selectively depict the May 4th movement with students just like Red Guard in Cultural Revolution - breaking into people home to catch and burning house. There are actually protest and strikes, and the protest started right from Tiananmen square. Why the most important scene is omitted? Why were open debate allowed in Beijing University's library at that time? What would happen if protest and open debate today? One of the two China communist party founding leaders is Chen Du-xiu. Ironically, he left the party later and refused any help from the communist party. He turned to liberalism instead.