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.