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.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

ewleeds This film addresses the racial problems that blighted Western Societies some 150 years ago. meaning the exclusion and persecution of minorities by those groups who had the most men, followers, weapons, money and at times an active and aggressive mob mentality. This wonderful film deals with the early trials of the first Chinese settlers to the US and those who followed them and it illustrates several disgraceful real-life situations when seen from a Chinese person viewpoint. To keep production costs down it lacked the to be expected western film scenes containing the all too familiar cowboys and gangsters, fast gun play, cattle herds, busy farriers, a brutal but fair Sheriff, the local Army Fort, townsfolk including women and children, it lacked not having a gold mine or men panhandling for gold in the river scenes (it was alleged to be set in a mining town) but ignoring this it did contain an excellent film land education on slavery, misguided job protectionism, with accurate and well portrayed historical pointers about Chinese immigration to the US. The last time I saw a film similar to this was called Indo-China whose star was Catherine Deneuve. Praise be to all who worked on this wonderful production and great actors they were. Rosalind Chao was the star of this film and deserved an Oscar.

worleythom There are no likable characters in this movie.Even the protagonist is mainly just a victim. She shows some tenacity, but we don't really get to know her enough to like her.Shows that Chinese people were scapegoated, mistreated, excluded, robbed, murdered in the 1800s.Shows a poor Chinese father selling his daughter into sex slavery.Everyone the protagonist encounters mistreats her.Not a fun movie. Its redeeming social value, if it has one, is in showing the fallout from racism and sexism.Which is perhaps unnecessary. For a downer, any day's news will do.A movie should at least have a likable character. This movie lacks one.

Prof_Lostiswitz A gorgeous and very intelligent movie. Highly unusual to make a western from the Chinese point of view, also to make one from the woman's point of view.These people do it without sentimentality; there's never a false note in it. Lalu has three strikes against her: an ethnic Mongol in China, a woman in a male culture, a Chinese in America. Yet she can draw on her warrior traditions forb a sense of pride inaccessible to most of her compatriots.The relationships she gets into seem totally real; at the same time, there is no attempt to cover up the ugly reality of white racism (not that the Chinese men are much better than the Americans).This is how the old west must have been, and this movie gives us an honest and dramatic portrayal. It deserves to be much better known.

tim_o_callaghan Gritty social realist story of Chinese woman Lalu who is sold into slavery in the late 19th century, and taken to a rough mining town in the American west. There she faces a series of humiliations, rejections and triumphs before finding at least a degree of happiness with a sympathetic saloon keeper. By turns both gloomy and sentimental (not necessarily a bad thing) issues of racism and feminism are very much to the fore.