The Sacrifice

Very good war drama. Has good action and I love how they filmed from both the POV of foot soldiers, the American warplanes, and the gunners side to get a close-up of what it was like on the battlefield for each perspective.

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?

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.

No pun intended - actually the international title of the movie. Or is it just the german title? Not sure, but anyway, the movie is based on historical events and may elevate certain things too. I can not tell you how accurate it is. I can tell you that it feels quite patriotic. But you should not have an issue with that. US movies do the same thing - making the heroes bigger than they are.

In war time certain sacrifices have to be made. Production values are really good - the setting seems simple enough. Or at least it is contained so you won't lose your train of thoughts or won't get lost in who is who and who is fighting for whom. Action and drama work hand in hand - not the best movie ever (at least for me), but nmore than decent enough.

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.