The whole film gives me a feeling that the People's Volunteer Army truly has the spirit of bravery and self-sacrifice. However, it fails to tell me why, what the significance and meaning are.
Also, most of those gory close-ups are not necessary, even being abused. There is no need to utilize those to show the bloody aspect of the war, let alone those remains of dead bodies are all the respectable heroes'. They should have tried other smarter methods.
I have my sincere respect for the actor Zhang Yi. He has shown his tremendous acting here. Also, other items like visual effects, costume, photography, are all above-average levels...
...except that one of the co-director Guan Hu himself is selfish and nasty. He deliberately wore a U.S. Navy's hat when he was in an interview about this film in which his compatriots fought against the U.S. Army. He was impolite at all when they cast visited the monument to the martyrs of this war. Just imagine that Tom Hanks wore a Nazi armband when he was in an interview about his film Saving Private Ryan, and danced delightedly when he was visiting the monuments of the Normandy landings, what would you feel?
I vote six stars for this film, and minus three of them owing to Guan Hu.
