ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Randomness90s I love me some Donnie Yen but this movie sucked. It hurt my feelings. The movie starts out strong with the war beginning and plot centered on the tension between Chinese and Japanese similar to the first IP man. So it starts out promising but leads to a great disappointment. I don't understand how this movie could fail so much with a strong cast. The villain was a strong lead...wait yes I do, THE PLOT SUCKED!What really urked my EVERY LASTING NERVE was that the love connection that was supposed to be there between Chen Zhen (Donnie) and the girl Fang Qing was NEVER really there...AT ALL. It was never established and dragged the entire plot down. She was drunk the entire movie. He catches her packing a gun and suspiciously takes a photo that exposes him then *drum roll*...he LETS HER GO!? This low down, drunken, pretty girl betrayed Chen Zhen, exposed his identity to the Colonel antagonist, ultimately leading to the brutal deaths of his fellow comrades from back in the war, had his sister beat up and violently raped by the enemy Colonel, also Chen Zhen is butt naked from head to toe while being brutally beat with knife knuckles and whipped to the brim point of DEATH.....then are we supposed to FEEL a connection or a lost for him when she dies???! Other than surface physical attraction there was nothing really worth there that amounted to his lost. A super hero is supposed to be clever, diligent and always alert. He was P*SSY WHIPPED in this movie! Donnie's awesome movie track record, reputation, fighting and charisma could not save this film. The only cool part is that he did channel some Bruce Lee in there with the noises and techniques that Bruce would do.

samuel shen Where to start….? Watched it on Netflix, and was really excited for the first 10 minutes because for once in my lifetime I finally came across a MA movie that's not telling me the story about how the Chinese being invaded from whomever for whatever reasons. I was wrong, miserably wrong.At one point I was still looking at Donne Yan killing German solider in the Western battlefield, minutes later he became Chen Zhen (played by Bruce Lee in the 1972 blockbuster, "Fist of Fury") in a black suit kicking Japanese's asses. Don't get me wrong, the fight scenes are crystal clear, fast, and furious; but for every 5 minutes fight scene comes a 35 minutes "Chinese trying so hard to be united against the Japanese", I just couldn't help but to skip through the so-called "acting" part. I knew what's coming next, you probably knew too, in fact everyone who have ever watched a MA movie would have known exactly what's going to happen next.This is not about being incredibly stereotypical, this is not about absolutely zero character development; this is not even about being predictable. This is about the epic failure of the Chinese movie industry, the fact that they DO NOT have the brain power to think of anything new that's suitable in a movie to tie with Martial Art.To conclude this, history is history, we do not need another and another and yet another movie to emphasis the past. We won't be nemesis trying to revenge the Japanese, this is not "glorious bastard", and we do not want to fall back in the same pattern and same routine, that's why we study history. And Just a side note, never did a single Chinese troop fought outside of Asia during WW1, try harder next time.

vps2 Although the narrative gets convoluted at times, the historical setting of the Chinese labor corps sent to aid the allied war effort during world war 1 is historically factual ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Labour_Corps ), though it has been largely forgotten.the Chinese intelligentsia also successfully mounted pressure to cause Japan to delay full scale aggression until the 30s ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-One_Demands )this movie is essentially a big budget hong kong action movie produced as a homage to Bruce Lee. At times it strives to be too many homages at once with Donnie Yen resurrecting both Kato AND Chen Zhen ( Fist of Fury).It shouldn't be conceived as Chinese propaganda (anymore than any of the Bruce Lee movies were) or anti-Japanese, as long as you understand that the Chinese truly were the underdogs back then.in fact, the young Japanese actor playing the colonel totally stole the show.

Angelus2 Chen Zhen returns from France to save his country from the Japanese, and takes on the role of a superhero. That's the basic plot. The film draws out the plot, and places numerous characters with different stories.The opening fight scene was quite spectacular, as Chen Zhen lays waste to his enemies and protects his friends with amazing kung-fu, but then it just goes downhill, the plot is perhaps the main problem and the actors fail to provide a decent performance. After watching Ip Man and the sequel, I expected Donnie to ascend the ranks of his fellow Martial Art movie stars, but instead he descends to a place far lower. The rest of the fight scenes are too fast and rely heavily on wires, therefore Donnie's true Kung-Fu potential is never seen.Sure, a tribute is wonderful to watch. But when you bring a legendary character back to life, you better get it right...Yen failed miserably. I loved the Ip Man films, and Dragon Tiger Gate; and envisioned Donnie as the saviour of Kung-fu movies..But something went wrong along the way.