The Sacrifice

About the only thing accurate is the name of the conflict. Two stars for the production quality.and one more for a decent music score. The actor's performances are rough, military accuracy is deplorable, the dialogue is hot trash. All around, it's just not good. Far better than a high school art project, but not by much.

I love foreign films and seeing events from the other side of the coin, but this movie? It's just really poor.

I've seen far better out of Korea, Ukraine and even other film companies out of China.

Unfortunately, I'd skip this one unless you really just needed some background noise.

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.

It'd been interesting to see the Korean war from the perspective of the Chinese and North Koreans. In the first 30 seconds the film starts with a grotesque distortion of facts even the Chinese cannot be teaching to their people it is so badly out of synch with reality. About 5 minutes in I gave up hope of being entertained or any truth being portrayed in the depictions.

Chinese troops were sent in swarms, many of them lacking even the most basic gear, training or probably even an understanding of what they were dying for. That would have made a really interesting story. The garbage spilled out by this mockery of history is not worth wasting time on.

This movie is about China's involvement in the Koran war with an ill-equipped army. The cinematography is excellent as were the majority of the actors. The pacing was a little slow, but this was due to the strategy involved, and not the directing. However, some scenes were used more than once, which was odd. One commentator wrote that this movie is propaganda; well, what does that make Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor, if not over the top propaganda war movies?

If it wasn't made in todays situation, I would surely have given that movie a 7 or 8 of 10. But in todays political situation the whole scenario, the heroism that is told about North Korea in China that days, plus the end of the movie is today unbearable to me. The today's human rights situation tells a close story and at the date the movie plays, Mao Zedong was about to build up the communistic system in China, which also lead to the North-Vietnam war in consequence. America didn't succeed in Vietnam we know. It was a disaster which better wouldn't have happened. But this movie is also the wrong way. It shows that masses of people which are loyal enough to their country are heroes when giving their live for the communism. That's the message of the movie. And it's simply unbearable today. Praise to the director and actors, ... but no, not! I even wouldn't recommend it to Chinese people.