Ji jie hao

Besides all the positive reviews about its realistic visual style, the shaky camera and all the "Private Ryan" stuff, it really deserved compliments from Chinese people, while we can see the true differences between Chinese people and Western people in a cultural perspective.

I've read some reviews criticizing the Assembly for it being too "western", and has significantly less character development in the entire movie, but to state in short Assembly is a movie purely shot from the angle of Captain Gu, who is the main man in the movie. It is very unusual to portray any war from an individual perspective for Chinese, even not in recent years. However, once someone wants to try it, it will come out with some side effects bound with Chinese culture. 1, Captain Gu's character is very "north-Chinese", which means he takes everything personally and with high dedication. Usually, he takes his men more than brothers. When brothers die, he cares about their bodies and believes they will be reincarnated. This is very typical Chinese man-man relationship in a near-modern china. Plus, the supporting characters are not memorable enough due to the magnitude of this Chinese civil war. China has the largest population in the world, which means one or two lives are not significant. And even the director strives to focus on individuals, such reality still rule the whole story.

2, Captain Gu's has a significant pursuit over the comrades' honor they deserved. However if you were Chinese, you would feel the motivations behind this action are strongly related to Chinese beliefs. Gu has strong emotions on his men, but he never accepted the truth that they are all gone. He'd believe they wouldn't rest in peace because the earthly honor unattained. Besides, director Feng Xiaogang apparently deviated from the typical Chinese war movies' atheism tune and communism campaign injected by political needs. This is to note the fact that very few man purely completely accepted atheism, even in a Communism China.

Well done. This is a Chinese war movie about the wide gray scale in the war and in China.

2, Captain Gu's

Feng Xiaogang's Assembly was the opening film at last year's Pusan International Film Festival, and tickets were sold out in record time once they were made available online. Such is the faith (or curiosity) of the new film from the director who brought us movies like World Without Thieves, and martial arts Hamlet The Banquet. When you think of Chinese directors making a movie based out of Chinese history, you can't help but imagine the massive amount of propaganda that get so blatantly infused into the story and especially the dialogue. But here, Feng managed to bring about a movie which goes beyond the usual ra- ra, and shows us that a movie with universal themes can also come out from what is essentially a war movie based upon China's tumultuous era after WWII.

Assembly refers to the call of the bugle to retreat and regroup, and this is the call that Captain Gu Zidi (Zhang Hanyu) and his 47 men of the 9th Company, 3rd Batallion, 139th Regiment, are keenly listening out for, as they go about their mission in ill-equipped fashion, holding fort on a strategic plain. Sent to the frontlines for war-crimes, Captain Gu and his men, while being the best at trench warfare, find themselves severely lacking in essentials - manpower, ammunition and heavy weaponry, as they go up against the marauding forces of the Nationalist army, with their relatively superior armour. However, their mantra is old school - only the bugle will signal their fall behind, and everything else means fulfilling their mission objectives at all costs.

While all might seem lost, this provides the kind of tales of valour that comes out of these battles, something like 300's. Assembly honours the spirit of the unit, of their tales of bravery and unflinching under insurmountable odds. If you're looking for a war movie, then Assembly will not disappoint. For the first hour anyway. Told in three acts, the first act, all 60 minutes of it, is where the action takes place. The war sequences here aren't poetic in the veins of Terence Mallick's The Thin Red Line, but are more aligned with Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, with its gritty realism, strained colours, and bloody, gory violence.

We're probably, in recent years, in tune with war movies that put us in the shoes of aggressors, and that is to follow an assault team. Very rarely are we put into trenches and be seen to be on the defensive like that of Iwo Jima, soaking up wave after wave of attacks. And that's where Assembly shines, in having four intense battle sequences, three of which were on the defensive scheme of warfare, and the other, while an assault, does seem more to be on the losing end rather than achieving a clear, decisive victory. If details are what you're after, then you probably can't go wrong with the single bolt weapon, primitive artillery and the sharing of tin helmets. In fact, you'll probably be wondering instead that the PLA at the time was really backward, given the world's military technological advancement in the West/Japan during the 40s.

And given last year's double bill by Clint Eastwood in Flags of our Fathers and Iwo Jima, Assembly seems like both movies combined, in providing both an in-depth look at the battles fought, as well as taking time off to contemplate more serious issues in dramatic fashion. In the second and last acts which take up the remaining hour, we follow Captain Gu as he tries his darnedest best to get his company recognized for the contribution it made, no matter how minuscule it might seem compared to the helicopter view of achievements. These acts might bore those who came satisfied with the first half, but for those looking into a more intimate drama of one man's fight for his lost brothers, then this portion will likely appeal to you.

Ultimately, Assembly is an ambitious film. It combines drama and action, and in both aspects, doesn't hold back in bringing about the best it probably could. Kudos go to actor Zhang Hanyu who plays Captain Gu, in what can be essentially a one man show, putting focus of his place in history and his solo fight against the system. And after watching this, you'll probably won't hesitate to watch another war movie coming out of China, if they meet the benchmark set by Feng Xiaogang. Recommended!

indeed,i agree this is a very powerful movie: chapeau to mr feng Xiaogang for this tour de force ! recent years war movies the like of "flags of our fathers", "saving private ryan","iwo jima" are certainly (and always will be) violent but with lesser gratuitous effects and they dealt very justly with the myriads of war consequences, first on the soldiers and the rest of us. i salute the initiative of mr feng. here, i am not comparing his 'the assembly' to the previous film titles, for no war is alike and comparable. but his courage in depicting a period of profound political disturbance in his own country make us all stop and ponder, and this is on a personal note since i am vietnamese and having lived through much of my own country's war, what are the tragedies of fratricide between brothers of same origins, beliefs and values. mr feng showed us the strong sides and the various weak sides of soldier in this part of the hemisphere. by that process, he erased those past clichés of Asian cultures in the practice of that belligerent art. is or are there any morality stemming out of this movie ? mr feng will be more apt to answer than myself. finally, i wish someone in my own country could have courage and integrity ( and resources !) to make this kind of movie for future generations to learn from our past. mr feng has carved himself an indelebile mark in Chinese filmaking. bravos...

I was attracted by the film when the trailers came out. I was at first shocked by its vivid, cruel and accurate description of the war scene. But when I watched this film at the cinema, I could hardly hold back my tears. It's not a pure military blockbuster. It's a story of a hero searching for the glory and the honor that he and his brothers deserved. It's a story of the return of a long-lost heroism.

I think the biggest breakthrough that Xiaogang Feng made is there was no propaganda for the Communist Party of China. Soldiers pulled the triggers of their rifles because it was their mission that demanded them to do so. They feared blood, feared death. They would step back when bullets were buzzing around. They would save their friend from dying at any cost. I'd say that director Feng had created some real vivid figures. The soldiers in the film are a real reflection of the true Chinese spirit.

As a Chinese, I loved this movie very much even though it was not 100% "Made in China", for it was a milestone in the Chinese film history where directors learned not to simply imitate how American or European directors to shoot a movie, but to use these technologies to tell a more convincing story. Heroes are still human beings, and this is what "The Assembly" actually wanted to tell.

I'll give a 10/10. It's really worth watching, at least from the point of view of a Chinese.

I gotta say that in the first 40 minutes of the battle show, I did spot scenes from Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers and the Korean: Taegukgi hwinalrimyeo (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386064/). Actually, I'm not surprised at all, I mean who (the directors) wouldn't do the same thing? Some directors might curse Steven Spielberg for not leaving them much room to shoot a different war movie after Saving Private Ryan, and indeed this movie has, in my opinion, in no way transcended the 1998 war masterpiece. Still, I'd like to give credit to this Chinese director for his guts to do such a Chinese war movie that well handles battle scenes with great details, tells the audiences the past without being necessarily affected by current Chinese politics, and touches a lot of people simply because most of the story feels just down to earth and so damned real. I won't go any further on these points, because there's one more significant thing about this movie, i.e., it's the first of this director's works that could be appreciated by all the audiences other than those from mainland China only.

The director has been a big name in Chinese movie industry by the end of last century, bringing Chinese fresh outlooks about domestic movies. However, one could probably better understand the director and his previous movies only from a "Chinese" perspective. And when I say "Chinese", I mean you'd better be living in mainland China, excluding SARs like Hong Kong. But this time, as I said, it's quite different since anyone could understand and appreciate the story. It's a good shot to see how far Chinese movies can go internationally without the presence of Kongfu and male characters with long braid at the back of their heads, without the setting in a remote and underdeveloped Chinese countryside, and without bold and overused sexual scenes.

I read about this movie on the internet for the last few days, and it was this piece of information from a Chinese blog that drove me to watch it, and I quote and translate this information as follows: "... at 23:00 when the movie Ji jie hao ended in a Beijing's big movie theatre tonight, with no presence of any of the directors and actors with the movie, the audiences were unwilling to leave their seats, and along with them was only their tears and standing applause."

With no stars in this movie, it was reported that the box office hit 2,000 million Chinese dollars 2 weeks after the premiere in China. I will definitely encourage both Chinese and non-Chinese to watch this movie. And for those who might be interested in our ancient country, I recommend two other quality movies: Huozhe ("to be alive" 1994) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110081/; and Ba wang bie ji ("farewell, my concubine" 1993) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106332/.