Diagonaldi Very well executed

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

ebiros2 This is a movie about an event that actually happened in Chinese history, but it takes artistic license and changes what happened in reality. The result is an almost unrecognizable story to what happened with Liu Bang and Xiang Yu during the war of Chu-Han contention.The story is about one of the most famous war in Chinese history between the two rivals Liu Bang and Xiang Yu for the control of entire China. History is clear about who the winner is and Liu Bang becomes the first emperor of the Han dynasty. But this is one of the most exciting story in Chinese history next to "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms".Whatever they changed from the historical story actually made the story worse. I have no idea why the producers chose to make the story into the drama that is this movie. The plot of the original story is far better than this story. There is no build up to the conflict that happens in the real story of Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. It also doesn't show why Xiang Yu who was clearly winning at the start, ended up losing his force, and eventually gets surrounded by Liu Bang's army. Feast at the Hong gate was one of the turning point of this war, and Xiang Yu had a once in a life time opportunity to kill Liu Bang, but failed to cash in on this opportunity. He never recovered from this mistake, and his tactics meanders after this meeting until his eventual demise.There is so much highlight scenes in this war, and the characters were all so interesting, but this movie screwed all of this up. All the good details of the story never made it into this movie. The two hour long movie could easily have been an hour and a half if the useless drama the script writer inserted into the story were edited out.Failure of script writing is the ultimate downfall of this movie. Compared to "The Red Cliff I and II" where director John Woo carefully inserted his interpretation to the story, which made that story so good, this movie had no such story telling behind it.Too bad, for the money they put into this movie, it could have been another "Assassin" level production. A better movie about Liu Bang and Xiang Yu is awaited with more spot light on the interesting characters, and build up to the story.

Max Hui Bai I am hovering around 7 or 8 for this one.The English translation is just translation in this movie. I can understand the classic Chinese they use in the conversation, but I found that the English subtitles totally ruin the beauty of it. Whoever the translator were, this person didn't even bother using the word farewell in place of goodbye in appropriate situations. Too bad u really have to understand Chinese to enjoy the linguistic pulchritude of this piece. Also, it is too bad that the tale about Yu Ji's dance is not acted out before Yu Ji's suicide. Plot is alright. I kinda like the intellectual "fights" between Zhang Liang and Fan Zeng. I particularly favor their quotes from the Book of Yi and their argument on the property of certainty(change) of future and fate.Many little issues, such as the far-fetching finger-biting scene and the awkward first-time encounter between Yu Ji and Xiang Yu, which involves over-unrealistic trust between the 3 figures, exists, and they could have been taken care of with more efforts. It is kinda interesting to see that, observing from all the male characters, the Chinese definition of masculinity is physically characterized by the dark eyebrow and tanning face instead of the Hollywood style of big muscle, and psychologically noted for excellent analytic skills (playing weiqi, the Chinese chess in addition to figuring out what plots other folks are planning) and knowledge on classics works. The last plot of Fan Zeng framing all of Liu Bang's inner-circle people is a very excellent attempt of bring up another little tide of climax, but is kinda far-fetching to me. I don believe being in a ruler's position impair one's capacity of trust, it merely requires more skill to use it.

rgblakey The Asian film market deliver some of the biggest epic action period films in the industry. In addition they usually follow some piece of actual history which is the case in the latest White Vengeance. Will this epic action piece of history live up the normal quality experience they are known for? White Vengeance follows the story of two brothers contending for supremacy during the fall of the Qin Dynasty during the events of the Chu-Han Contention and the Feast at Hong Gate. As expected this film delivers the scope and scale needed to bring this historical story to life. At first the film seems to struggle a bit with too much going on to keep up with itself without getting cluttered in confusion. This seems more due to just too much historical information stuffed into one film. If you are not all that aware of the history, it's a bit hard to follow. If you are aware of it or just able to take the journey and not worry about some aspects then this film works really well. The first half does deliver the action, but still manages to take its own sweet time to develop the characters and direction. The clever nature of the story makes it a bit more than just your average martial arts epic, but instead a clever woven tale that plays like the game of wits. The battles feel as epic as they are intended to be, but still keep a bit of a personal touch as opposed to just the pile of mindless soldiers killing each other.There is a love story side of this film that just seemed to slow everything down and not all that necessary. This isn't the best of this genre to come along, mostly due to some of it's slow pace and runs a bit longer than it really needed to be, but is entertaining. If you are a fan of the epic martial arts period pieces then you should give this one a try.http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-dallas/bobby-blakey

Joe Sun I always believe the historic movie has to somewhat be accurate. of course, it is a movie, story can be more dram-alike which creates more tension of the movie. but this story is just down to the dirt. every part, (not just details) of this true history is wrong.The idea of story is really foggy and unclear. the war scene is far from good. fortunately,the actors are hardcore professionals. they somehow saved this movie from "super bad" to "meh~". this Danial lee, who wrote the story/direct, should stop making these epic historical stories look like trash on the screen.